YuGiOh!: Farewell, My Friend
by MarkMachine
Summary: The saying goes, 'A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.' This may prove to be a trial Terry cannot pass.
1. We Don't Return As Heroes

_Yu-Gi-Oh Future History Part 3_  
><em>Farewell, My Friend<em>

_The saying goes, 'A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.' This may prove to be a trial Terry cannot pass._

_Welcome to part 3 of my Future History story._

_A fair warning to those new to this story. This story uses all original characters, so if such a style of story is not your 'cup of tea', you have been forewarned. The Yu-Gi-Oh anime is seen as an anime series within this story._

_Within my fan fiction, the anime rules of 4000 Life Points are used as opposed to having 8000. In all other regards of the game, unless noted, the story adheres to the rules of the official Trading Card Game._

_Hope you enjoy the story!_

* * *

><p>Terry Hairston sat with his arms crossed near the front of the jet listening to, well, really nothing. He was still getting used to being back in control of his body and being in the loop of things. Sharp's dealings with the situation with Savior and their excursion from the US to China had only been summed up briefly by Sharp when the two met in that weird place. Aside from that, he was very much clueless about what had happened in the time that he had not been 'awake'.<p>

But that wasn't all that important, he decided. It was more important and vital to focus on his next move in figuring out what Savior wanted. Right now, Savior had his Millennium Puzzle in his hands as well as the Dragon Bones that he'd framed them for stealing.

Terry stood up and moved toward the back of the plane, passing by some of his friends that were sleeping until he came to the seat Kwandao was sitting at. She was gazing out the window and he sat in the empty seat next to her. She didn't stir.

"Hey." he said, nudging her arm.

Kwandao jumped slightly, "Hi."

"Penny for your thoughts." Terry said.

Kwandao looked down, "Honestly, I was just thinking of how different you two are."

"Us two? You mean me and Sharp?"

"Yeah," she said, leaning back into her seat and twiddling her thumbs. "Sharp's so aggressive and intense and kind of a loner, too."

"What, a loner?" Terry asked.

"Yeah, he didn't get along well with your friends at first."

"So what about me?"

Now Kwandao visibly blushed. "Well, you…you're more kind and caring and compassionate."

"Well, thank you." Terry said, smiling.

"Can I ask you something?" she asked, looking at him for the first time. "Do you know what happened to Sharp?"

* * *

><p><em>Terry could feel it. Even in this world between worlds, he could feel the anxiety and the frustration Sharp was giving off. He didn't understand how, but he could. But it wasn't anxiety and frustration alone. There were other emotions. Fear. Panic. Reluctance. Acceptance. Terror. They all came together at him, and he could only wonder what it was that Sharp was going through or seeing that made him feel this way. But then, all at once, a single thought that wasn't his came through his mind.<em>

"_I'm going to die."_

_Terry's heart quickened and suddenly before him, a cloud appeared and just as quickly, it parted to show him what he assumed Sharp was seeing. And all he saw was this huge red flame barreling toward him. _

"_No!" Terry screamed, and threw himself through the image. All at once, he found himself back in his body, Kwandao screaming behind him and that same red fire coming for him._

* * *

><p>"To be honest, I don't know, Kwandao." Terry said, wanting to reach for the Millennium Puzzle but it was absent from it's usual place around his neck. "Sharp is a part of me, and not the Millennium Puzzle. But he was created by Shadi. Without the puzzle, I just really don't know what happened to him after I took his place."<p>

"Took his place?" Kwandao asked.

Terry crossed his arms and closed his eyes in thought. "I could feel fear coming from Sharp. I've never felt that before. As long as he's been in control of my body, I could never feel or hear or see anything he was doing. But then I felt that fear and I could see him about to be hit by some kind of fire wave or something. I didn't even think, I just wanted to help him out of that and I found myself in front of that just before it hit and knocked me out."

Kwandao was playful when she said, "It sounds exactly like something you'd do."

Terry sighed, "But did it really help anything?"

Kwandao wanted to ask what he meant, but Terry instead asked what she knew of Savior and where he was.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"When you told me about what had been happening, I thought about this. Whenever I was near you or near Knowledge, I could feel it. Anyone that had an item couldn't really sneak up on another. Can you sense him?"

A light went off in her eyes that tipped Terry off that she hadn't thought of that idea, but after a few minutes of concentration she said she couldn't feel him. But that concerned her. "Because if I focused hard enough, I could even feel the ones you left at home."

An idea popped into Terry head, but almost as soon as it did, he dismissed it. Honestly, he thought, Savior would have no need to make that move. He stood up and walked back toward the front of the plane. _From what I understand of Savior, his motivation right now has been to work behind the scenes and in this case, he's been drawn to me. He realized that I had the Millennium Puzzle when I was going against Re'-Sha but it doesn't seem like he made a move back then. But when the Dragon Bones came into the picture he came after both them and the Millennium Puzzle. He seems to want to destroy these demons inside the Dragon Bones._

Terry was about to sit in his seat when he found Janet sitting there. Surprised, he stood there for a moment. He knew that she'd seen him but she was looking out of the window. Terry shrugged, figuring she'd come over here for more than his window view and sat down next to her. It was a tense moment with Terry not exactly sure what she was looking to say or do. All she did was look at the clouds below them. After awhile, she sighed like she had come to some conclusion.

"Terry, what made you believe?" she asked.

"Believe what?" he responded.

"Back at the Battle City tournament, when I lost my duel against Re'-Sha?" Now she turned and looked at him with a sideways glare. "She told me how you were the only one between yourself, Jamie and…Catravious that believed I could beat her. Why did you believe in me like that?"

Terry met her gaze for a few seconds then closed his eyes to try to order his thoughts as he spoke. "Because I didn't think she was invincible. She…she was one of the scariest people I've ever had to deal with in my life. But in a duel, she wasn't unbeatable. I really do think that one way or another, I would have had to duel against her at some point again to reach the conclusion we did. Even if you had have beaten her." He could see her eyes narrow slightly, but he continued. "But you hadn't come all that way in that tournament off of a fluke. You're a strong duelist, stronger than I guess what my friends gave you credit for at the time."

Janet stopped trying to stare Terry down and smiled to herself. "About the answer I expected. You are about the only person I do trust."

"So why ask the question?" Terry countered.

Janet looked down at the palm of her hand. "Maybe I just wanted to hear it out loud and not assume it."

Terry shook his head, "You're no flash in the pan duelist, this I'm sure of."

"And in everything else?" she asked.

Terry wasn't sure what was driving her to ask all these questions of him, but instead of sugar coating it, he told it plain. "Honestly, you could be a little more caring for your allies and friends."

The hand Janet was looking down at formed into a fist while she spoke dismissively of his opinion. "Allies are only your comrades until your vested interest is gone. Friends lean on one another too much."

Terry glared hard at her, forcing her to meet his eyes when he responded. "You're right about both, Janet, especially about friends. It's both a weakness and a strength to lean on others for support. Take it from someone that knows this for a fact, Janet. You shouldn't shun your friends."

"I don't have friends." Janet said.

Terry shook his head sadly. "You've got at least one that's laying on those seats in the back."

Janet scoffed, crossing her arms. "Catravious? He means nothing to me."

"I've know Knowledge for a long time, Janet. I really do believe you mean something to him."

Janet's eyes widened and Terry could see her stiffen up noticeably. He almost dared to believe he saw some blush come to her cheeks, but just as soon as he noticed those things, Janet shot up from her seat, gave Terry a hasty excuse me as she passed and disappeared from his vision into the jet's bathroom.

Knowledge sat in the far back of the jet laying down on two sets of chairs as sort of a makeshift bed. There weren't any doctors around to treat the slice he had over his right eye that damaged his vision, but it didn't hurt a whole lot. He hadn't been able to see out of that eye since he was attacked, and he realized there was a very good chance he'd lose the ability to see out of it altogether.

He knew it would do him better to do something other than sit alone and have only that pain keep him company. But he didn't want other company right now. What he kept doing was going over the chain of events that got him that way. And he kept wondering if his right eye was worth Vega's and Janet's safety. Especially when Janet was too stubborn to admit she needed help and Vega was too lost in his problems to care about things around him. It seemed an especially high price to pay. An especially high and unfair price to pay.

Knowledge swung his feet to the floor and stood up. He moved up the aisle toward the bathroom door, feeling a couple of stares at his back. When he tried the door, he found it locked. He lightly knocked on it, and turned back to face the rest of the passengers. Just as he realized the only one that was missing, the door opened and he was facing Janet. He knew he heard a 'hoo-boy' from behind him somewhere.

Knowledge lowered his head, scowling as he moved past her, "I ain't in the mood for even one of your wisecracks, Janet." Knowledge failed to notice that when she stood aside in the doorway to let him in, she'd intentionally left her foot out just enough to jam his when he walked past. He tripped over it, spinning, and somehow managed to hook Janet as he went down. It ended up with Knowledge sitting on his butt against the bathroom wall and Janet on her knees, hands on his chest to keep from falling on her face. There wasn't any other place to look for the two of them except at each other. The two of them stayed that way for a minute, just looking at each other.

"We were almost like this when you called me a sweet little knucklehead." Knowledge said to Janet.

Janet didn't move but his words definitely caught her. She did, in fact, remember what she said to him. But she thought he was knocked out when she said it. "You were awake?"

"I was." Knowledge confirmed, "And that's how I know there's more to this tough girl façade you're putting up."

Even though she'd just admitted to it, Janet furiously shook her head. "You're wrong. You're dead wrong, Catravious. What do you base that on?"

Knowledge noticed she hadn't moved. "Because you're clearly lying to yourself. Imagining it didn't happen at all. Trying to figure out a way to save this bad girl image you created. Like I said before, you're just trying to prove to yourself that you don't need me."

Janet felt pressed in a corner, fishing for something to get her off this hotseat and she found it when Terry's words to her struck. "Prove that I don't need you? What about you, all this chasing after me you're doing. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were attracted to me."

Janet had gone fishing and be damned if Knowledge didn't bite. Now he was the one looking just a little uncomfortable. "Is that true, Catravious?" she egged on, trying to tease him by running a finger delicately under his chin.

Knowledge grabbed her hand and glared hard at her. It wasn't with contempt or scorn, but more like pity. "I had feelings for Janet at one point. A girl that I could connect with on some level. But you? You can't even figure yourself out."

Knowledge and Janet didn't move for a second, then Janet wriggled free of Knowledge's grip and stood up. He did the same, leaning up against the wall casually. "Tell it to me straight, Janet. If it isn't because you're trying to show you don't need me, why are you constantly at odds against me?"

Janet looked like she wanted to duck out of the bathroom right that second and almost as if it was a prayer instantly answered, Jamie came into the doorway asking if the two of them were alright. Neither Janet nor Knowledge said anything. Janet took a glance back at Knowledge and then scooted beside Jamie and back into the plane. Jamie watched her go by silently.

* * *

><p>Below New York City - 8:20am<p>

A labyrinth is a classical kind of word that makes the subway system of New York sound a whole lot better than it is. But that's what it is to some. A maze that crisscrosses and intersects with numerous tunnels below the ground that funnel goods as well as people through one of the busiest cities in the nation. In the minds of some, a labyrinth best describes it. But to other's, it's better thought of as the lifeblood of the city. Sure, you have things like Wall St and Empire State that are landmarks all on their own and have dizzying effects on how things work. But how do the people, the goods, the information, all of that get there? Through those 'blood vessels' that people call subway tunnels.

For Savior, it was the perfect place to set up his newest base of operations for the Shang Dynasty.

If one could call that system a set of blood vessels, then Savior and the dynasty would be considered a virus; an organism that, unknowingly to the host, feeds off of them in order to infect and survive.

Rina, Savior's female second in command, stood by him in a rare moment where she was not alert and watchful. Even as others worked to move vehicles and supplies to their designated areas and others worked to run electricity into forgotten subway station that was their new base of operations, she said, "This place is a dump."

She paced, "Warm and stuffy, it will never be quiet with trains running above us, very little for fresh air…" she turned to look at her leader, sitting at a makeshift table of two rectangular crates and a small square one for a chair. "If I can ask, why?"

"Why, indeed?" Savior replied, not looking up. "I suppose we needed a change of pace, a new venue. It was only a matter of time before we would have been spotted anyway, I'm sure. And now we're on the other side of this planet. It will be difficult for anyone to find us."

Rina shook her head, "No, that's not what I meant." She gestured to the table. "I mean why did you do that?"

"Disassemble the Millennium Puzzle?" Savior asked, holding a piece up toward the lamplight so he could see its finish. "I suppose that I have a theory about how I can make use of this."

"Isn't it more useful in its completed state?" Rina asked.

"Oh, infinitely." Savior agreed. "But there's a drawback to it."

"There is?"

"Yes. It's something I pulled from the entrance tunnels to the old base."

"You mean the hidden recording devices?"

"Exactly. They recorded the three kids that you encountered talking about how other owners to these items could sense where the others were. This is how they were led to you and not to Terry."

"So you disassembled it to blind them to our location."

Savior nodded, pulling a terrycloth from his pocket and shining one piece of the puzzle. "Well, that was my main intention. But like I said, I have a theory. I believe I can use this to destroy those demons in the Dragon Bones."

"What?"

Savior stood, and the glow from the pieces of the Millennium Puzzle cast a glow on his face. It made his red eyes stand out even more than normal. He placed the puzzle pieces into a box and motioned to his second in command. "I've been doing some research, Rina. Come with me."

* * *

><p>Millstone City - 8:30am<p>

"Trap…monster…monster…trap…spell…spell…"

This was his newest routine. He'd wake up, fix himself some kind of breakfast, shower and leave to come to this particular spot. A parking lot outside of a pizza shop. This parking lot was the same one where he lost in a 2 on 1 duel against Jamie Cantou and Natasha Chapel, the latter being his former clan leader from his days in Clan Prime.

He'd take a seat and spend time looking over and reading every single card in his deck. Such was Michael Xavier's compulsion. Or maybe his obsession.

_There's no way I should have lost that duel…_he told himself that. More than a couple of times, which made another part of him question his sanity. Only crazy people talk to themselves like that.

He saw a young man approach him from around the corner of the pizza shop. Like most did these days, if you saw the Duel Disk attached to your arm, it was an open invitation for a duel. The kid noticed Xavier's and Xavier took note of the kid's and his appearance. Kind of scruffy looking with dirty blonde hair that was wild. Freckles peppered the kid's face and along with big brown eyes, gave the look of a boy that looked too big to be what Xavier guessed to be around 15. Nevertheless, he thrust his arm out and let his Duel Disk snap into place.

"You know…" Xavier said, dusting his backside off as he stood. "I'm pretty strong."

"Duel!" the kid yelled, ignoring what was Xavier's first and final warning. Xavier just shook his head, shuffled his cards and slapped his deck into place.

"What's your name?" Xavier asked.

"Lionel. Why?"

"Lionel, my name is Xavier. And I feel it's only proper for you to know the name of the person that's about to play against you."

Lionel scoffed. "First move is mine. Draw!"

Lionel fanned his cards and plucked one from it quickly. "I'll set one reverse monster."

Xavier's brow creased when he saw his opponent then set the remaining cards he had in his hand into his Spell/Trap Card Zones. 5 reverse cards and one reverse monster. _Just what kind of strategy is he planning here…_

"My turn, draw." Xavier said, glancing at his drawn card, Double Summon, and then looking at that row of reverse cards. "You don't want this duel to last very long, do you?"

Lionel, Xavier noted, was mute, and wisely so. Xavier's experience told him just what he'd said aloud. Options in one's hand were a key to Yu-Gi-Oh, if the _the_ key to this game. So if you laid your whole hand out in your first turn, you must've hit on something that would get you the win or at the very least into a strong position to control your opponent. Then you could rebuild your hand. Against such a strategy, Xavier figured that nothing less than a offensive approach from his own deck would counter whatever Lionel would plan for him.

Xavier allowed himself a smirk. "I'll commend you for at least getting me to think about the next few moves I want to make." He didn't wait for a response from his opponent before he slapped a card down to his Duel Disk. "I'll summon Elemental Hero - Ice Edge (800/900) in attack mode!"

Lionel watched the monster appear and spoke as it appeared. "Ice Edge. An Elemental Hero that can, during your Main Phase, attack me directly at the cost of discarding one card from your hand. Also, once you've inflicted damage to me with a direct attack, you can destroy one of my reverse Spell or Trap Cards. What's one destroyed card going to mean to me?"

Xavier slipped a card into his own Spell/Trap Card Zone. "Not as much as when you lose 2, you whelp. Activate Double Summon!"

A Spell Card appeared on Xavier's field behind Ice Edge that illuminated Xavier's body. "Double Summon allows me to perform one more Normal Summon this turn. I'll summon a second Elemental Hero - Ice Edge! (800/900)"

With two monsters on his field, Xavier took two cards from his hand and showed them to his opponent. "I'll discard NEX and Necro Gardna (600/1300) to attack you directly with both my Ice Edge monsters!"

Both of his monsters hammered the ground and torrents of frozen ice shot away from them and crashed brutally against Lionel's body. The impact wasn't enough to knock him down, but he did skid backwards on his sneakers a foot or so before he stopped moving.

Lionel - 2400  
>Xavier- 4000<p>

"Elemental Hero - Ice Edge's effect now activates. When I inflict damage to my opponent, I can destroy one reverse card on their field. With two monsters, I'll destroy the last two reverse cards on the right."

The ice that remained on Lionel's field instantly melted down into orbs of water that hovered slightly above the field. They moved and hovered over the two cards Xavier had selected and turned themselves into clouds of vapor that came down over the cards. With a snap of Xavier's fingers, they froze instantly. They revealed themselves to both players as Mirror Force and Magic Cylinder before shattering like glass and fluttering away.

Xavier looked at his opponent with a cold glare.

Lionel didn't look away from Xavier's glare.

Xavier said, "You're no rookie, are you?"

Lionel shook his head, then said, "It's still your turn."

Xavier crossed his arms and closed his eyes. _Why would my opponent set Mirror Force and Magic Cylinder, have me use almost all the cards in my hand to inflict moderate damage to him, and not make me pay for it?_

"End turn." Xavier announced, holding onto the last card in his hand.

"My turn, draw." Lionel said, giving his drawn card a look. "I'll flip summon my reverse monster. But before that, I'll use this card. Trap Card, Light of Intervention!""

"Cyber Jar! (900/900)" Xavier exclaimed with genuine surprise. He didn't even have time to react or regard the silver, mechanical space pod before it started producing a loud humming noise. It wasn't but seconds afterward that the thing exploded in nuclear fire that took the pod as well as his monsters out too.

"Each player must draw 5 cards from their decks and Special Summon all level 4 or lower monsters to the field in either face-up attack position or face-down defense position." Lionel said in a monotone, already picking the five cards up. Xavier was doing so as well, but still was trying to come up with a common denominator for this deck. What kind of strategy lends itself to his current plays?

Xavier gritted his teeth. _But also, Light of intervention forces all players to play all cards face up. If he or I wanted to play a reverse monster, it would be forced into face-up defense position._

Xavier's cards consisted of Neo-Spacian Dark Panther (1000/500 L3), Elemental Hero Burstinatrix (1200/800 L4), Polymerization, Elemental Hero Avian (1000/1000 L4) and Skyscraper.

Lionel's cards consisted of Armor EXE (2400/0 L4), A Feint Plan, Mystical Space Typhoon, Meteorain and Great Maju Garzette. (0/0 L6)

The two duelists regarded their hands because it made their next moves very clear to the other. In Lionel's case, his best and probably most obvious move from this point on was to special summon his Armor EXE, release it and advance summon Great Maju Garzette. Armor EXE is one of the strongest level 4 monsters in the game, but it cannot remain on the field without tributing a Spell Counter to it during both player's standby phases. Lionel seemed to have found a use for the monster in using it as the means to power-up Great Maju Garzette. Garzette is a monster that has no attack power but it's effect allows it's attack power to become double the amount of the monster used to advance summon it.

Lionel placed his Armor Exe on the field attack position.

Xavier knew what was coming. He placed Elemental Hero Avian, (1000/1000) Elemental Hero Burstinatrix (1200/800) and Neo-Spacian Dark Panther (1000/500) all into face-up defense mode, due to Light of Intervention forcing his monsters to that position.

Lionel moved quickly once Xavier's monsters were set. "I'll release Armor EXE (2400/0) to advance summon Great Maju Garzette! (0/0)"

The golden armor set that had been Armor EXE disappeared as particles of light that got absorbed into the card of Great Maju Garzette. Suddenly, it exploded in green fire that shaped itself into a neat pillar nearly twice the height of Xavier. Bits of the fire died away to reveal more and more of the monster. Humanoid in shape with blue clothing over most of its body but light armor over its waistline, legs and shoulders. White hair escaped from the devil-horned helmet it wore, partially covering pale grey skin.

"Great Maju Garzette's effect comes into play. It's attack power is determined by doubling the monster's attack power that was used to summon it. Armor EXE's attack power was 2400. Therefore, my monster's attack power is 4800!"

Xavier glowered at the counter that appeared near Garzette, realizing now just what kind of strategy this now was; One Turn Kill or sometimes called OTK. Lionel called out a stupidly strong monster and more than likely some of those reverse cards would be used to destroy his monsters. With a clear shot at his Life Points, it would only take one attack to end this game. Xavier had to wonder how he planned to do that. All three of the monsters he'd gotten through Cyber Jar's effect were in defense mode.

"Great Maju Garzette, (4800/0) attack Elemental Hero Avian! (1000/1000)" Lionel called out. It caused his monster to stretch out one muscular arm with the palm facing Avian. A hexagram appeared in the palm of it and, like it was coming from inside it's very arm, a sword started to form. It grabbed the handle, swung it across its body and started charging toward his monster. Lionel pointed to one of his reverse cards and caused it to reveal itself to Xavier.

"Reverse card, open! Defenders Intersect!"

Xavier sucked his teeth, knowing the effect of Defenders Intersect. It caused all the defense position monsters on his field to be turned to attack position. But even with that effect, he wondered, shouldn't the effect of Light of Intervention make that impossible?

Just as he was about to tell his opponent that, his Light of Intervention card shattered to show a familiar Quick-Play Spell Card behind it. "I'll chain my own trap card with Mystical Space Typhoon and destroy my own Light of Intervention. Now your monsters have no choice but to stand up and be destroyed."

Just as he said, all three of Xavier's monsters begrudgingly stood from their kneeling positions to upright, showing their change from defense to attack. Garzette was drawing closer.

"I'll activate the effect of Necro Gardna from my graveyard!" Xavier called out, bringing his free hand to bear in front of his graveyard. "Necro Gardna allow me to remove it from the game from the graveyard to negate the attack of one of my opponent's monsters."

Lionel pointed to another of his reverse cards, "I won't let you do that! Reverse Card, open! Disappear!"

The trap card Lionel just activated flipped up onto the field for a brief moment, disappeared and it seemed like nothing happened. But on Xavier's field, the card that ejected from his graveyard wasn't Necro Gardna but Lionel's Disappear card. Xavier shot his eyes at Lionel demanding an explanation.

Lionel glared at his opponent. "Disappear lets me remove from play one card in my opponent's graveyard. I removed Necro Gardna before you could use it's effect." He shot his palm out toward his monster. "Garzette, kill his monster!"

Disappear removed his ability to negate this attack and Lionel had forced his monsters into attack mode with Defenders Intersect. Xavier could do nothing but watch his monster be cut down by Garzette with a vicious slash through its midsection. The shockwave that followed was more than enough to blast Xavier off his feet, backwards through the air and face-first into the ground.

Xavier - 200  
>Lionel - 2400<p>

"Ugh…" Xavier groaned, crawling back up to his knees. He had been seriously humbled. "You made the biggest mistake not finishing me off, Lionel."

"How?" Lionel asked.

"Because you attacked the wrong monster."

Lionel gave a dry laugh. "Wrong, Xavier. You showed me the cards you'd gotten through Cyber Jar's effect. I know you have Polymerization in your hand for fusion. The best monster you could come up with would be Elemental Hero Flame Wingman (2100/1000) which would need both your Burstinatrix and the Avian that I destroyed. Never mind the fact Flame Wingman isn't strong enough to take on Garzette, (4800/0) you're saying that I destroyed the wrong monster?"

"Yes."

"Prove it. You do know that one of the cards I got from Cyber Jar myself was Metorain? With this trap card, I can inflict the different between an attacking monster's attack power and a defending monster's defense power as damage to your life points. You've got one turn to win. In the next turn, I'll use it's effect to inflict damage to you through your defense position monsters. I'll set one reverse card. Turn end."

Xavier pulled the next card free from his hand and didn't even look at it. "I'll release Elemental Hero Burstinatrix (1200/800) to advance summon Elemental Hero Neos! (2500/2000)"

The card form of Neos came to the field and Neos itself burst from the card. A humanoid monster that had no mouth but somehow let out a fierce roar. You couldn't help but not notice the monster as it was standing, for Lionel, right in front of the midday sun and cast a intimidating shadow over him.

"Don't tell me…!" Lionel stammered out, looking from Neos to Neo-Spacian Dark Panther, which was now encased in a sphere of black and violet light.

"You've probably guessed right by now, Lionel. Neo-Spacian Dark Panther and Neos will perform Contact Fusion!"

Neos descended from its perch where Lionel couldn't see the monster just in time for it to become encased in a white and red light, but it kept its shape unlike Dark Panther. Neos raised its fist and a beam of white light shot out from it and it connected with the black and violet sphere. Almost like mixing two watercolors together, the colors started to swirl down the beam back to the body of Neos and the black, violet, red and white all started to swirl around the canvas of a body. The monster that emerged was primarily black, but bore armor on its chest and thighs much like the original body of Neos. Human fingers were replaced with blade like claws and wings, black on the exterior and red on its interior, emerged from its back. Dark Neos beat its wings twice and jacked its hands to its sides when it roared at Lionel.

Lionel was not impressed with it.

"All of the Elemental Hero fusions have some kind of effect. Whatever Dark Neos' may be, it's still far inferior in attack power to Garzette! (4800/0)"

Xavier ignored the remark, instead moving to command his monster. "Dark Neos! (2500/2000) Attack Great Maju Garzette! (4800/0) And at the same time, I'll activate it's effect. Once per turn, I can select one effect monster on the field and as long as Dark Neos is on the field, I can negate it's effect!"

Lionel face showed the shock more clearly than any words could have when his monster's attack power dropped from a beefy 4800 to 0 and the beam of high-intensity energy Dark Neos had loosed struck him.

Lionel - Lose  
>Xavier - Win<p>

Xavier, inwardly, let out a small sigh. Outwardly, he and his opponent eyes met for a moment. Xavier nodded to the kid, who was still down on one knee, as a means to acknowledge his strength and his duel. But otherwise he was silent save for the 'whirr' and 'click' of his Duel Disk returning to standby and the crunch of stones below his feet as he walked off.

Xavier spoke to himself, _I have to admit, that Lionel was not bad. It was a good challenge for me, but I would love nothing better than to get into a duel against Jamie or Natasha again. I…I just know I can beat them._

Xavier pulled his deck free from it's holder and began his ritual anew as he walked to wherever his feet carried him. Even as he spoke to himself and compared his level to those few days ago, he still felt inadequately prepared to take either of them on. And it put a pain like being stabbed in the heart into him. "Trap…monster…monster…"


	2. Time Doesn't Heal All Scars

Below New York City - 8:50am

Rina obediently followed behind Savior as they walked by teams of men and women hustling along to get their base setup. Savior acknowledged them all as he walked past, heading for what used to be a security office that he had claimed for himself as his private study. The room itself was a simple square. Neatly arranged on bookcases that stretched from one wall to the other were the mountains of books and preserved papers that Savior had collected. In the right hand corner, Savior had setup a desk which had a few books open on it and a small laptop computer. There were two chairs in front of the desk and one behind it. Against the other wall were boxes that were still being unpacked with other things Savior used in his study. They weren't important at this point, though. Rina sat when bided by Savior at one of the chairs in front of the desk. He sat behind it and brought the laptop out of its sleep mode.

"I've told you that story of the 10 demons probably a dozen times by now, Rina." Savior said.

"Yes." Rina replied politely. "How our ancestors sealed them away after they caused so much ruin to the world. They sacrificed their lives to seal them into the Dragon Bones."

Savior seemed to be half listening and half daydreaming as Rina was speaking to him. "Yeah. At one point, that is was I believed too, Rina."

Rina's face showed her confusion. "I don't understand. You don't believe your own records?" she gestured to his books on the table.

Savior smiled sadly, "A book can tell you a tale but it is your imagination that makes it a story. The tale that I've gotten is that they made this sacrifice in order to preserve the world and to keep it from being destroyed by these demons. But I'm beginning to wonder if that really was the case."

Rina wanted to press her leader further but felt she should just let him explain at his own pace what he was trying to say. He continued, "They sacrificed themselves to save the world and I only know this because of what I've pieced together from that period of time. But there are so many things that I cannot confirm."

Savior leaned back into his chair, staring up at the fluorescent lights above him. "There are still many questions about our past, Rina. I've begun to suspect it isn't as noble as I once thought."

"I don't understand."

"Rina, I began to ask more questions. These demons aren't natural. They aren't something that are native to this world. So where did they come from? What brought them here? What gave our ancestors the idea to seal the demons?"

Rina had a question of her own, "What made you question these things, Savior?"

Savior looked down at the box on his desk with the pieces of the Millennium Puzzle on it. "The appearance and the discovery of this. And the other 6 items that accompany it. I saw what this puzzle was capable of with my own eyes."

From behind him, Savior gingerly grasped one of the Dragon Bones and laid it on the desk next to the puzzle. "That puzzle was able to call out a monster in my duel against Sharp. Alive and more than willing to strike me if it needed to."

"Called a monster from where?" Rina asked.

Savior was quiet for a moment. "That…I'm not sure of. I was able to piece together from my research into Egypt that that move Sharp did was called Soul Burning. It's a method that uses the body and soul of someone to bring a monster to this world. But I'm also not sure where these demons that are within the Dragon Bones came from either. But they are similar, aren't they? An item from our past that contains a powerful creature. An item from the Egyptians that can call out to living monsters. There is a common thread there that I don't think should be ignored."

"You believe they were made at the same time?" Rina asked, seeing the picture that Savior was showing become a little clearer.

"No, not at the same time. I already know and can confirm that these Dragon Bones predate the Millennium Items by at least hundreds of years. Now that I have this Millennium Puzzle in my hands, I wonder about two things. One is whether the origin of the demons in the Dragon Bones are from the same place that these Millennium Items call these monsters from-"

"So if they did come from the same place, that means that our ancestors were duelists? Or that they were aware of this place, this…realm where the Egyptians called these monsters from?"

Savior nodded, "Very astute. But my other question is this. As I said before, the Millennium Items were created long after the existence of the Dragon Bones, and yet they do similar things. I wonder if these Millennium Items, for all the problems they are, are they the key to finally getting rid of these damned demons?"

Savior stood. "Rina. How long until we are operational?"

Rina thought for a moment. "There's probably another day left until we can be back to full operation."

"And your Rapiers?" Savior asked.

"The Rapiers always stand ready."

"Good. After we are back online, we will not wait around to make our next moves. The Dragon Bones are now our main priority. We'll delay sending out people into the local workforce. I must ask you and your Rapiers to perform a raid on the DXS."

Rina flinched. "Against the DXS themselves?"

"I don't think that a cyber attack against them will work, especially now that we're not even fully set into our new location. The DXS have a wealth of information that we need, and I have it from good sources that the DXS have information regarding the Dragon Bones that I may not. I want that."

"Timetable?"

"Take your time, Rina. Scout your opponent, send men in for recon. It is a important mission but stealth will be your best ally with this."

"I understand." Rina stood up and excused herself in order to prepare for her mission. Savior sat behind his desk and scattered the Millennium Puzzle around him. He had no idea how long it would take for him to finish it.

But there's no time like the present.

* * *

><p>Private Jet - Above US airspace 9:00am<p>

"So we're clear on the plan?" Terry asked.

"A lot of iffs in this plan…" Natasha grumbled, not exactly enthused by it.

Terry glanced at her. "What's so iffy about it? Kwandao uses her ring to bring you guys to the ground now that we're back over the states. Done."

"There's two really big iffs in that plan of yours, Terry." Janet pointed out. "One is that you're asking us to put our lives in her hands with this Millennium Ring of hers."

Terry leaned back in his chair a bit, "Oh, is that all? You've all already taken one trip on that magic carpet ride. Didn't hurt you then, so why not now?"

"Then there's the other part of your plan." Jamie said, who was sitting right besides Terry. "Where you ride this plane by yourself back to the states and let yourself get taken into custody."

Terry rolled his eyes, not in boredom but exasperation, "Will you stop reminding me of it, Jamie? I gotta do it, otherwise, we're all marked. It's not like I'm thrilled to do this either."

"Let him be." Vega said, listening to the conversation but looking like he was asleep with his arms and legs crossed.

Knowledge looked at Vega with his one good eye. "I can't tell if you mean that because you believe in him…or if it's a way for you to save your skin, Vega."

Vega turned his head as if to look out the window. "Neither. That is his decision, so honor it."

Terry clapped his hands together twice to get everyone to focus on him. His eyes had a somberness to them. "There's no discussion in this, people. I'm going in and you're not. Deal with it. Especially you, Knowledge. You need medical attention for your eye."

"And how will you get out?" Kwandao asked. "You can't chase Savior from behind bars."

"Even if I have to break out, I'll get out." Terry said simply.

Knowledge shook his head. "It just doesn't make sense to me. You're going in to give them something to take the heat off the rest of us. But then you say you're gonna break out?"

Natasha said, "It sounds like a plan both Terry and Sharp would come up with."

That logic made everyone pause just for a second, because that did make sense. Terry stood up and moved away from the group. "Go ahead and get yourselves ready. I don't care what you guys say, you're going. Kwandao, you're set?"

"Prepared." was all she said. Natasha, Knowledge, Jamie, Vega and Janet all moved to stand in a circle around her. Kwandao worked to gather the energy she'd need to complete this. The others looked toward Terry who was facing them but not even really looking at them.

"I'd better not have to visit you on death row, Terry." Jamie quipped.

Before Terry could even muster a response, Kwandao's Millennium Ring filled the compartment with soft yellow light that forced him to squint his eyes. And once he opened them, both the light and his friends were gone. And all at once, loneliness hit him hard. It wouldn't last long. He knew that this plane was not more than some minutes away from landing. He reached for one of the in-cabin telephones, got past the operators and made a statement that got him in contact with the airport's security. It was like the whole time he was watching himself in the third person and thinking, 'what a idiot.' He imagined someone on the ground through so themselves. He thought, some 20 minutes later, the plane was making an approach to land but then started climbing in altitude again. When he looked out the window, he saw a few flashing lights over toward another landing strip and coincidentally, that's where this plane was heading.

The pilot made a second attempt to land and this time guided it down onto the ground smoothly. As soon as it touched down, Terry unbuckled himself from his chair and stood at the sealed door that led outside. He could hear the hustle and bustle beyond it of men giving orders.

With no ceremony when the door started to open inwards, he slowly dropped to his knees, hands clasped behind his head. He didn't want to look up. He knew that there were guns drawn on him so all he did was keep his head down and follow with their instructions. He felt the snap of handcuffs on his wrist. Almost right then and there, he began to lose it. He'd never been arrested before and now he was going in for something no judge would likely say 'I'll let you go, I'd better not see you in here again.' It's truly an experience to have your freedom taken from you.

He did wonder, as they led him out of the plane and through the airport, how the news people had gotten here so quickly. Two or three cameras with bright, white lights were pointed at him as he made his long walk. Still, he kept his head down.

"Well, hero…" he said to himself, "Off you go to save your friends."

* * *

><p>Millstone City - 9:45am<p>

The air around the top of a particular building became electrified for absolutely no reason until a golden glow illuminated the area and out of nowhere, Kwandao softly touched the ground with Lamar Vega, Janet Rush, Natasha Chapel, 'Knowledge' Collins and Jamie Cantou surrounding her. She looked around and felt confident she'd ended up right where she wanted to be.

The soft wind caused the rest of them to open their eyes to see they were standing on the rooftop of a building somewhere. Out in the distance, they could clearly make out the skyscrapers of Millstone so they were in the right place.

"Where are we?" Natasha asked.

"Magnificat." Kwandao said.

"This is M.A.G?" Janet said with surprise, prompting her to take a fresh look at her surroundings.

Magnificat Academy for Girls. A prodigious private girls school located to the north of Millstone in a neighborhood called Tremont. It had been built in the 1970's as a private school that was nothing special. They gave good educations and had good staffing. It wasn't until later in the 2000's that they opened their doors to international students in a program called People to People. Exchange students came to their dormitories and lived there as they got an education and help in speaking the native language. This got them national and even international attention which allowed them to expand their campus, expand their staff and budgets and allowed them to include more diverse programs. One of key interest to the group was that M.A.G was becoming one of the first schools that offered programs to women seeking to make careers in gaming.

"Why'd we come here?" Vega asked.

"This is my school." Kwandao said. "It was the only place I could think of for the transfer."

"We're still wanted, Kwandao." Vega reminded her. "And you ran from this place to seek help from Sharp. Why would you return?"

Kwandao started walking toward the single doorway on the roof that led back into the building. "It's safe enough to hide out in now, I'd bet. The school closes for a week around this time. There's no staff here, and most of the students stay at the dorms or take vacations themselves."

"Good enough for me." Natasha and Janet said together.

"Wait." Knowledge said. "Just who made you the leader of this outfit, Kwandao?"

Jamie stepped in immediately. "Let's not even go there, Knowledge. I want to get you out of here anyway to get your eye looked at."

Kwandao looked behind her. "Vega?"

Vega harrumphed, but started toward the door, too.

Kwandao led them inside the door which led to some dimly lit stairs in a brick stairwell. At the base of the stairs was another door that led them into a grand library. Polished wood abound and high windows that looked out on the campus' front entrance greeted them. They moved through the library to it's entrance and were led to one of the main halls. The library was at the end of this particular hall and an exit was right next to them. They took it and went outside.

The outside of M.A.G was designed much like a cul de sac with seven buildings. After you walked up a hill that was where the road and parking lots were, the main campus was right in front of you. On either side of the main campus were their two science buildings that housed more than science classes. The two buildings at each end were the two dormitories that students used. The building on the left between the science building and dorm A, as Kwandao called it, was the sports hall. The building on the right between dorm b and the other science building was the school's restaurant/cafeteria.

"If you go right down the hill there, not all that far from here is a small hospital." Kwandao said to Jamie and Knowledge.

"Good. Which one of these dorms are yours?" Jamie asked.

Kwandao pointed toward dorm B. "I'm in room 218, on the second floor."

"As if there'd be a room on the first floor numbered 218..." Knowledge mumbled under his breath. Jamie shoved him down the hill because he saw that Kwandao heard him and saw that flash of silver in her eyes.

"I'll be back when I can." Jamie called back to them. Natasha waved to him as he went.

"Question." Janet asked, she looked at herself and the others. "Kwandao, this is a all girls school, right?"

Kwandao nodded. She followed Janet's eyes and saw she was staring at Vega. Kwandao didn't get what she meant.

Natasha looked from Kwandao to Vega and immediately picked up on it. "Ah, I got it. I'll take care of him."

Vega took a step backwards. "If one of you think you're gonna turn me into a girl, you can forget it."

Natasha seemed to turn the idea over in her mind for a moment, but then smiled sweetly at Vega. "Nah, your shoulders are too big for a girl, Vega. I guess the best thing to do…"

She slid in close to him, hooked her arm around his and gave him big, puppy dog eyes. "…is to let everyone know you're all mine while all the staff are away, baby."

Kwandao blushed so hard she looked like she got hit with a steam gun, but Janet was doubling over in laughter. Poor Vega, though, couldn't do anything but get dragged into the dorm with Natasha on his arm.

* * *

><p>Hillcrest Hospital - 11:10am<p>

Jamie was a wreck.

He and Knowledge had found the hospital easily enough, got checked in easily enough, and Knowledge was being tended to easily enough. Well, easily enough considering his circumstances. But for Jamie, the wait was killing him. No doctors or nurses had even passed through the area where he was supposed to wait. No receptionist either. Knowledge had left his side more than a hour and a half ago.

And right now, he was looking at a breaking news report about how the police had taken Terry into custody.

He had meant what he'd said about not having to see Terry on death row. He knew, and he imagined that Knowledge and Terry didn't, that this was serious business. It became something completely different when you stole from another country's government. Which is what they'd been accused of doing. They knew they were innocent, but the odds of proving it were low right now. They could be extradited to China to face _their_ standards for breaking laws, as well as their own countries.

"Mr. Felix Anderson?"

Jamie had to remind himself to answer to that fake name he'd given the hospital when he brought Knowledge in. He had no idea if Knowledge had done the same. The woman that called his name was a older woman, likely in her 50's or so. A blonde with curly hair that came down to the middle of her neck. She had the appearance and attitude of someone that had seen a lot of sick people in her career; totally professional yet emotionally detached.

"Yes?" Jamie said nervously, extending his hand to shake with hers.

"I'm Dr. Danielle Busse. I've been handing the care of your friend Catravious."

_He used his real name._ Jamie thought to himself.

Dr. Busse continued, "Let's head to my office."

Jamie didn't like the sound of that, and his heart fell with each step he took. They walked what ended up being a short distance to the next set of doors in the hallway which was her office. She held the door for Jamie as he stepped in. A nice wooden desk that was neatly organized was off to the side with two seats in front of it. A chair for her sat on the other side and a small computer station was behind the desk. He took a seat for himself and she sat behind her desk.

"How are you today?" she asked.

"I've had better days…" Jamie answered truthfully.

"I can imagine." Dr. Busse replied, opening up a manilla folder she'd brought into the office with her. "Your friend, Mr. Collins, is fine right now. He's still recovering right now from the anesthetic we used when we treated his eye. I expect he should be ready to leave once we're done here."

"And his eye?" Jamie asked.

Dr. Busse paused for just a slight second.

"Can you save his eye?"

"I'm sorry." she replied. "It was completely ruptured. The first aid put on it helped to keep it from being infected but it's truly not salvageable. Not even the best surgeons in the country would be able to save his right eye."

Jamie felt the weight of the world on his shoulders at that point. "Oh, man…"

"What relation do you have to Catravious?"

"I'm a friend of his."

"And what happened to him to get him this way?"

Jamie thought quickly. "He got jumped. He was trying to protect some of his friends from some people and got into a fight with them. One of them drew a knife and cut him."

Dr. Busse leaned back into her chair. "Funny. That's not what he told me."

_Damn…_Jamie thought to himself. Aside from that, he kept silent for now. And he could feel Dr. Busse's eyes on him, like she was hunting him.

"You can tell me the truth." she said in a warm voice.

Jamie wanted to roll his eyes, but didn't. "You wouldn't believe it." Jamie said instead.

"Try me."

Jamie chewed on that, then decided to reverse roles. "How about you tell me how you're so believing."

"Well, that came from me trying to get that tennis ball away from him. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it fly through the air into his hands. Plus the fact I couldn't pry the damn thing from his open palm."

"The Millennium Eye…" Jamie breathed.

"So that's what you call it."

"Yes."

"So now that we're getting somewhere, how did your friend really get that cut over his right eye?"

Jamie exhaled deep. "Doctor, it pretty much happened like I said. Only…only that he was in China preventing two other people from being tortured. He put himself between them and their captor and she cut him."

Now the doctor bolted upright. "China?"

Jamie nodded.

Dr. Busse consulted her notes. "That can't be…a wound like that would have at least scabbed over more if you were on the other side of the planet and just now came here."

Jamie didn't want to go too far into detail with her. "That's another story. Look Doctor, I feel like I can't lie to you if I want Knowledge to get better."

Dr. Busse leaned back into her seat, crossing her arms. "You could lie to me and it wouldn't matter whether I would've or wouldn't have treated Catravious. But I feel like you're not lying to me."

"I'm not." Jamie reaffirmed.

"Good." she said, taking the papers she had and shifting them to the side of her desk where a paper shredder sat over the top of a trash can. Jamie and her locked eyes as she took them and sliced them into ribbons.

"You probably don't realize it, but you and your friends helped out my daughter some time ago and I'm eternally grateful for it."

"Huh?" Jamie blurted out, just as confused as to why she destroyed those papers as to why she was telling him he helped her daughter out.

"Do you remember an incident downtown some time ago? A young girl that was taken hostage?"

Jamie thought about it, but it didn't take long for him to recall the memory of what would have been Terry's first encounter with Re'-Sha. Re'-Sha had taken a girl hostage in the public library and had demanded that the police send her Terry or else she would kill the girl. This all happened just prior to Terry receiving the Millennium Puzzle and the intervention by Shadi into their lives.

"Wait, you mean that girl-" Jamie started.

"Was my daugher. Elise Busse. She was at that library studying when that girl abducted her. Afterwards, she told me about the boy that saved her. At some point, Terry reached out to her again after she'd been released and offered whatever he could to her to help her get over that experience. Including help from you two."

Jamie swallowed hard and wanted to sing 'It's a Small World After All' aloud to himself, but didn't.

"When I heard on the news about how you boys had supposedly robbed a museum, I didn't want to believe it. That seemed so far from what I had come to know of Terry from my daughter."

Jamie spoke up, "Doctor, that wasn't us. That wasn't any one of us in that video they showed. So we're trying to clear our names by getting to the real thief. We had him in China, but-"

Dr. Busse held up her hand, halting Jamie from going any further. "Jamie, I believe you. I believe what you're telling me, even if it's pretty farfetched. But I do have to get back to work before I'm missed."

Jamie stood with the doctor and moved with her to the door. She gave him a business card. "If you need anything, don't hesitate to call me. Terry saved my daughter, so when you see him, please let him know I want to return the favor anyway I can."

Jamie looked the doctor over once more. He realized that he probably was right to say she was professional and emotionally detached, but only when she wasn't talking about something related to her family. She had cupped her hands over his when she gave him the business card and she seemed almost desperate to help Terry. It warmed Jamie that the good deeds Terry had done had reaped some rewards.

"I'll let him know, Doctor." Jamie promised as the two of them stepped out into the hallway.

"I'll have one of the nurses escort Catravious out to you. Don't worry about a bill or anything, though. As far as anyone knows, you never were here." she said, turning on her heel and heading into the hospital.

* * *

><p>"Mr. Collins, are you awake?"<p>

"…"

"Mr. Collins?"

"Yeah." Knowledge rolled himself off the side of the exam table, still waking up. He found his memory of the last couple of hours fuzzy. Once Jamie had led him here, he'd been seen to immediately, checked over by a nurse and carted off for one of their better equipped rooms. He remembered the doctor that had worked on him, Dr. Busse…

* * *

><p>"Catravious Collins?"<p>

"Yeah." Knowledge said from inside the exam room. He'd been shimmied into a hospital gown on him and his bandages removed from over his face. He felt, strangely, colder without them. The doctor came into the room, holding a clipboard that she was scribbling in.

"Mr. Collins, my name is Dr. Danielle Busse." Knowledge gave her a nod of acknowledgement. "I can see you've got a severe laceration according to my nurses' notes. BP checks out ok…vitals are stable…"

She droned on and on for a moment with more nonsense that didn't interest him, so Knowledge let his eyes wander and they settled over her nametag attached to her white lab coat.

"Danielle Busse? Why does that name sound familiar?" Knowledge mumbled to himself.

"Hmm…" was all she said. She came close and without asking permission gently pushed Knowledge onto the table. The table was nothing special, but the headrest had a motor function to it that let the operator raise or lower it. Dr. Busse raised it and Knowledge squirmed around a bit. He was looking right up into a set of lights and all at once, every bad movie he'd seen where the patient woke up with the head connected to their butts came to his mind.

Knowledge saw the doctor at the counter off to the side washing her hands all the way up to her elbows and placing clear plastic gloves on. She walked over to him and laid one hand on his forehead to steady him. The other wedged open his right eye with her thumb and forefinger.

"Mr. Collins, how much can you see out of your right eye right now?"

Knowledge closed his left eye and focused on the right. "Honestly…"

"I can tell it's light in front of me. That's it."

"Hmm…" she hummed, and then reached for a machine that looked a lot like the scope doctors used in peoples' ears, but this one had a light on it. She looked into his right eye, then his left, then his right, then back to his left. She didn't ask, but Knowledge still didn't see much.

She then seemed to pay attention to the cut going across his face now. She asked him to scrunch up his face, blink and squint his eyes. "Well, this cut is shallow up here…" she traced her finger from the top of the cut to his eyebrow. "But it gets worse."

Knowledge felt a feeling similar to a rock dropping into his stomach. "How worse?"

She placed a finger right over the top of his left eye. "There are tiny muscles in your face that control your facial expressions. They're small, thin and not very strong all in all. I think one of them was cut. If you looked at your facial expressions on the left side versus the right side, there are differences."

"Big or small?"

"Moderate."

"…keeps getting better and better." Knowledge grumbled.

The rest of the exam was done with quickly and Dr. Busse had Knowledge sit up on the edge of the table while she took a chair in front of him.

"Mr. Collins. Let's talk about your eye now."

Knowledge inhaled, trying to prepare his heart.

"I'll tell it to you frankly and spare a lot of the medical terms on you. When you were cut, it cut into your eyeball and the cornea. Your retinas will not focus either. There's too much damage there that medical science cannot fix. Simply put, you're blind in your eye, Mr. Collins."

_You're blind in your eye._

He suspected it to be the outcome, but its completely different when its someone that's trained telling you that as opposed to your mind. He bowed his head, closed his hands into fists and rested his forehead on them. Bitterly, he thought to himself, _it still seems like I can cry out of both of them just fine._

Dr. Busse noticed but didn't seem to take heed of the fact her patient was crying. "There's still bleeding, and I know you can probably feel it. I want to put you under for a little while so I can stitch up your eyelid and the gash on your forehead."

"Doc, I gotta ask. What's the chances of me getting my vision back?" Knowledge asked desperately.

Dr. Busse looked him straight into his eye. "I'm sorry. There's practically no chance."

"…I see." Knowledge said.

"Why did you say my name sounded familiar?" Dr. Busse asked in a way to steer the topic away from this.

Knowledge grunted as he leaned back and laid up against the wall the table was against. "I just know that last name of yours for some reason. I wanna say 'Elise' for some reason."

Dr. Busse's eyes got wide. "H-How'd you know that?"

Knowledge jumped back at her reaction. "Hey, calm down, doc!"

"The police never gave out her name, I want to know how you know her name!"

"The police?" Knowledge said, and then it clicked in his mind. "Wait, doc, wait, wait. Calm down, and I'll tell you."

In a rare twist, the patient was now consoling and calming the doctor. Knowledge got up so he could stand. "Elise was one of the hostages that we're being held at the downtown library some weeks ago when a maniac took it over. That maniac was a girl named Kw-" Knowledge stopped himself. "A girl named Re'-Sha Shiyth. She demanded to have the police bring my best friend to her."

"Terry Hairston?" Dr. Busse asked.

"Yeah. He came and they played in a duel. As Terry had told me, Re'-Sha had bound two hostages to a machine that acted as a counter. As their life points got lower, these needles that were filled with acid or poison or something got closer to them. He played Re'-Sha to a draw and saved them both. When he told me about it, he said one of the girls' names was Elise Busse."

Dr. Busse seemed to choke up just slightly. Knowledge couldn't tell because she got up from her chair and opened up a cabinet next to his table. "She…she's my daughter. She told me about a boy that came in there that day and saved her. I couldn't go out to find him and thank him for that because the police were trying to protect my daughter from the media."

Knowledge nodded, with a smirk on his face. "Terry's like that. Always looking out for others before himself. He told me and Jamie that he gave her a means to contact him or me or Jamie afterwards if she needed anything."

Dr. Busse had pulled a syringe from the cabinet and had filled it with what Knowledge noted to be a sedative. She gently pushed him back onto the table.

"Then…that must make you Knowledge?"

Knowledge scrunched up his face, unused to an adult addressing him by his nickname.

"Yeah."

"Elise told me all about that day as well as the boy that offered to help her out…" she said quietly. "Catravious, I don't mean to be rude, but I really want to stitch your cut up as well as put some medicine on your eye. This is just something to help you sleep so you won't feel pain. May I?"

Knowledge offered his arm and as she injected him, she spoke. "Catravious, I heard on the news about how you supposedly robbed a -"

"No, that wasn't me. That wasn't us, any of the people you saw. We were setup."

"Your friend saved my daughter and I don't think I can ever repay that debt." she pulled the needle out and stuck a cotton swab over the puncture. "This should let you sleep very soon."

Knowledge nodded, and it probably helped that he hadn't slept much on the plane trip back to here because it wasn't but a few minutes later that it got harder and harder for him to keep his eyes open. Before he closed them, he noticed Dr. Busse fumbling with something in his hand.

"Catravious, let go." she asked.

Knowledge tried to lift his head to see what she wanted. He saw the golden sphere of the Millennium Eye in his hand.

"Cant…won't let me…" he mumbled before his eyes closed.

* * *

><p>Knowledge shadowed behind the nurse as she led him through hallways and eventually back toward some stuff he recognized. But all along the way, he could see other staff for the hospital taking not-so subtle glances at him. He ignored the first few, then he just kept staring at whoever he caught until the looked away. He guessed he didn't look real pretty without a bandage over his cut.<p>

Before long, the nurse stopped and motioned for him to head to the end of the long hall he found himself in. He nodded to her, stuck his hands in his pockets and did as he was asked. He felt something in his pocket, but just as he was about to inspect it, he paused and doubled back when he passed a mirror in the hall.

He ran a hand through his hair to the top of his head to get the bangs out of his face. He got a good look at the work Dr. Busse did for him. The cut, like she said, had been sewn together but his skin around where the cut was was extremely red and stood out plainly against his white skin.

Knowledge sighed deeply, looking out of one good eye at his reflection. He saw the item that was in his pocket was something Dr. Busse must've placed there. An eye patch. His vision on his right side was screwing with the vision on his left. He slipped it over his eye and adjusted his hair slightly so more of his bangs covered the patch. The black patch was easily visible through his hair, but the scar was almost all covered. A little of it slipped past the bottom of the patch.

He noticed through the reflection Jamie had snuck up on him. "What?"

Jamie shook his head. "Nothing."

Knowledge turned to him. "Jamie, can I ask you something?"

"Shoot." he said, guiding him toward the exit.

The two of them stepped out into the day. "I went across the planet to save a guy and a girl that don't even seem appreciative of it. And for my effort, I lost my eye and have this to remind me of it for the rest of my life. Was it worth it?"

Jamie was quick with his answer. "Yes."

Knowledge looked at him with an eye that begged for more than that for an answer. "Knowledge, if you had asked me, you rescued a girl that is losing herself within herself. And you rescued a rival that is lost in himself. Your job's not done yet."

Jamie turned so he was facing Knowledge. "Terry can do a lot of things and he's amazing in his own right. But only you can truly save them, Knowledge. They're still in pain. And if you give up on yourself, you're giving up on them. Don't look at that scar as a reminder of your failure, because you haven't failed. Look at it as a means of connecting yourself to them. A sacrifice that you made for them that you, she and he will have to remember for the rest of your lives."

And just like that, Knowledge felt just a little better about his situation. Because everything Jamie just said made sense.

"How you feeling now?" Jamie asked, hoping he wasn't as moody as he looked.

Knowledge inhaled, "Better, I think. Not 100%, but better than when I walked into that hospital."

"Good." Jamie said, then held out his hand. Knowledge looked down at it quizzically.

"What? You thought that pure, sagely wisdom I imparted on you was free?"


	3. Can You Spare A Tear?

Below New York City - 8:50am

Rina obediently followed behind Savior as they walked by teams of men and women hustling along to get their base setup. Savior acknowledged them all as he walked past, heading for what used to be a security office that he had claimed for himself as his private study. The room itself was a simple square. Neatly arranged on bookcases that stretched from one wall to the other were the mountains of books and preserved papers that Savior had collected. In the right hand corner, Savior had setup a desk which had a few books open on it and a small laptop computer. There were two chairs in front of the desk and one behind it. Against the other wall were boxes that were still being unpacked with other things Savior used in his study. They weren't important at this point, though. Rina sat when bided by Savior at one of the chairs in front of the desk. He sat behind it and brought the laptop out of its sleep mode.

"I've told you that story of the 10 demons probably a dozen times by now, Rina." Savior said.

"Yes." Rina replied politely. "How our ancestors sealed them away after they caused so much ruin to the world. They sacrificed their lives to seal them into the Dragon Bones."

Savior seemed to be half listening and half daydreaming as Rina was speaking to him. "Yeah. At one point, that is was I believed too, Rina."

Rina's face showed her confusion. "I don't understand. You don't believe your own records?" she gestured to his books on the table.

Savior smiled sadly, "A book can tell you a tale but it is your imagination that makes it a story. The tale that I've gotten is that they made this sacrifice in order to preserve the world and to keep it from being destroyed by these demons. But I'm beginning to wonder if that really was the case."

Rina wanted to press her leader further but felt she should just let him explain at his own pace what he was trying to say. He continued, "They sacrificed themselves to save the world and I only know this because of what I've pieced together from that period of time. But there are so many things that I cannot confirm."

Savior leaned back into his chair, staring up at the fluorescent lights above him. "There are still many questions about our past, Rina. I've begun to suspect it isn't as noble as I once thought."

"I don't understand."

"Rina, I began to ask more questions. These demons aren't natural. They aren't something that are native to this world. So where did they come from? What brought them here? What gave our ancestors the idea to seal the demons?"

Rina had a question of her own, "What made you question these things, Savior?"

Savior looked down at the box on his desk with the pieces of the Millennium Puzzle on it. "The appearance and the discovery of this. And the other 6 items that accompany it. I saw what this puzzle was capable of with my own eyes."

From behind him, Savior gingerly grasped one of the Dragon Bones and laid it on the desk next to the puzzle. "That puzzle was able to call out a monster in my duel against Sharp. Alive and more than willing to strike me if it needed to."

"Called a monster from where?" Rina asked.

Savior was quiet for a moment. "That…I'm not sure of. I was able to piece together from my research into Egypt that that move Sharp did was called Soul Burning. It's a method that uses the body and soul of someone to bring a monster to this world. But I'm also not sure where these demons that are within the Dragon Bones came from either. But they are similar, aren't they? An item from our past that contains a powerful creature. An item from the Egyptians that can call out to living monsters. There is a common thread there that I don't think should be ignored."

"You believe they were made at the same time?" Rina asked, seeing the picture that Savior was showing become a little clearer.

"No, not at the same time. I already know and can confirm that these Dragon Bones predate the Millennium Items by at least hundreds of years. Now that I have this Millennium Puzzle in my hands, I wonder about two things. One is whether the origin of the demons in the Dragon Bones are from the same place that these Millennium Items call these monsters from-"

"So if they did come from the same place, that means that our ancestors were duelists? Or that they were aware of this place, this…realm where the Egyptians called these monsters from?"

Savior nodded, "Very astute. But my other question is this. As I said before, the Millennium Items were created long after the existence of the Dragon Bones, and yet they do similar things. I wonder if these Millennium Items, for all the problems they are, are they the key to finally getting rid of these damned demons?"

Savior stood. "Rina. How long until we are operational?"

Rina thought for a moment. "There's probably another day left until we can be back to full operation."

"And your Rapiers?" Savior asked.

"The Rapiers always stand ready."

"Good. After we are back online, we will not wait around to make our next moves. The Dragon Bones are now our main priority. We'll delay sending out people into the local workforce. I must ask you and your Rapiers to perform a raid on the DXS."

Rina flinched. "Against the DXS themselves?"

"I don't think that a cyber attack against them will work, especially now that we're not even fully set into our new location. The DXS have a wealth of information that we need, and I have it from good sources that the DXS have information regarding the Dragon Bones that I may not. I want that."

"Timetable?"

"Take your time, Rina. Scout your opponent, send men in for recon. It is a important mission but stealth will be your best ally with this."

"I understand." Rina stood up and excused herself in order to prepare for her mission. Savior sat behind his desk and scattered the Millennium Puzzle around him. He had no idea how long it would take for him to finish it.

But there's no time like the present.

* * *

><p>Private Jet - Above US airspace 9:00am<p>

"So we're clear on the plan?" Terry asked.

"A lot of iffs in this plan…" Natasha grumbled, not exactly enthused by it.

Terry glanced at her. "What's so iffy about it? Kwandao uses her ring to bring you guys to the ground now that we're back over the states. Done."

"There's two really big iffs in that plan of yours, Terry." Janet pointed out. "One is that you're asking us to put our lives in her hands with this Millennium Ring of hers."

Terry leaned back in his chair a bit, "Oh, is that all? You've all already taken one trip on that magic carpet ride. Didn't hurt you then, so why not now?"

"Then there's the other part of your plan." Jamie said, who was sitting right besides Terry. "Where you ride this plane by yourself back to the states and let yourself get taken into custody."

Terry rolled his eyes, not in boredom but exasperation, "Will you stop reminding me of it, Jamie? I gotta do it, otherwise, we're all marked. It's not like I'm thrilled to do this either."

"Let him be." Vega said, listening to the conversation but looking like he was asleep with his arms and legs crossed.

Knowledge looked at Vega with his one good eye. "I can't tell if you mean that because you believe in him…or if it's a way for you to save your skin, Vega."

Vega turned his head as if to look out the window. "Neither. That is his decision, so honor it."

Terry clapped his hands together twice to get everyone to focus on him. His eyes had a somberness to them. "There's no discussion in this, people. I'm going in and you're not. Deal with it. Especially you, Knowledge. You need medical attention for your eye."

"And how will you get out?" Kwandao asked. "You can't chase Savior from behind bars."

"Even if I have to break out, I'll get out." Terry said simply.

Knowledge shook his head. "It just doesn't make sense to me. You're going in to give them something to take the heat off the rest of us. But then you say you're gonna break out?"

Natasha said, "It sounds like a plan both Terry and Sharp would come up with."

That logic made everyone pause just for a second, because that did make sense. Terry stood up and moved away from the group. "Go ahead and get yourselves ready. I don't care what you guys say, you're going. Kwandao, you're set?"

"Prepared." was all she said. Natasha, Knowledge, Jamie, Vega and Janet all moved to stand in a circle around her. Kwandao worked to gather the energy she'd need to complete this. The others looked toward Terry who was facing them but not even really looking at them.

"I'd better not have to visit you on death row, Terry." Jamie quipped.

Before Terry could even muster a response, Kwandao's Millennium Ring filled the compartment with soft yellow light that forced him to squint his eyes. And once he opened them, both the light and his friends were gone. And all at once, loneliness hit him hard. It wouldn't last long. He knew that this plane was not more than some minutes away from landing. He reached for one of the in-cabin telephones, got past the operators and made a statement that got him in contact with the airport's security. It was like the whole time he was watching himself in the third person and thinking, 'what a idiot.' He imagined someone on the ground through so themselves. He thought, some 20 minutes later, the plane was making an approach to land but then started climbing in altitude again. When he looked out the window, he saw a few flashing lights over toward another landing strip and coincidentally, that's where this plane was heading.

The pilot made a second attempt to land and this time guided it down onto the ground smoothly. As soon as it touched down, Terry unbuckled himself from his chair and stood at the sealed door that led outside. He could hear the hustle and bustle beyond it of men giving orders.

With no ceremony when the door started to open inwards, he slowly dropped to his knees, hands clasped behind his head. He didn't want to look up. He knew that there were guns drawn on him so all he did was keep his head down and follow with their instructions. He felt the snap of handcuffs on his wrist. Almost right then and there, he began to lose it. He'd never been arrested before and now he was going in for something no judge would likely say 'I'll let you go, I'd better not see you in here again.' It's truly an experience to have your freedom taken from you.

He did wonder, as they led him out of the plane and through the airport, how the news people had gotten here so quickly. Two or three cameras with bright, white lights were pointed at him as he made his long walk. Still, he kept his head down.

"Well, hero…" he said to himself, "Off you go to save your friends."

* * *

><p>Millstone City - 9:45am<p>

The air around the top of a particular building became electrified for absolutely no reason until a golden glow illuminated the area and out of nowhere, Kwandao softly touched the ground with Lamar Vega, Janet Rush, Natasha Chapel, 'Knowledge' Collins and Jamie Cantou surrounding her. She looked around and felt confident she'd ended up right where she wanted to be.

The soft wind caused the rest of them to open their eyes to see they were standing on the rooftop of a building somewhere. Out in the distance, they could clearly make out the skyscrapers of Millstone so they were in the right place.

"Where are we?" Natasha asked.

"Magnificat." Kwandao said.

"This is M.A.G?" Janet said with surprise, prompting her to take a fresh look at her surroundings.

Magnificat Academy for Girls. A prodigious private girls school located to the north of Millstone in a neighborhood called Tremont. It had been built in the 1970's as a private school that was nothing special. They gave good educations and had good staffing. It wasn't until later in the 2000's that they opened their doors to international students in a program called People to People. Exchange students came to their dormitories and lived there as they got an education and help in speaking the native language. This got them national and even international attention which allowed them to expand their campus, expand their staff and budgets and allowed them to include more diverse programs. One of key interest to the group was that M.A.G was becoming one of the first schools that offered programs to women seeking to make careers in gaming.

"Why'd we come here?" Vega asked.

"This is my school." Kwandao said. "It was the only place I could think of for the transfer."

"We're still wanted, Kwandao." Vega reminded her. "And you ran from this place to seek help from Sharp. Why would you return?"

Kwandao started walking toward the single doorway on the roof that led back into the building. "It's safe enough to hide out in now, I'd bet. The school closes for a week around this time. There's no staff here, and most of the students stay at the dorms or take vacations themselves."

"Good enough for me." Natasha and Janet said together.

"Wait." Knowledge said. "Just who made you the leader of this outfit, Kwandao?"

Jamie stepped in immediately. "Let's not even go there, Knowledge. I want to get you out of here anyway to get your eye looked at."

Kwandao looked behind her. "Vega?"

Vega harrumphed, but started toward the door, too.

Kwandao led them inside the door which led to some dimly lit stairs in a brick stairwell. At the base of the stairs was another door that led them into a grand library. Polished wood abound and high windows that looked out on the campus' front entrance greeted them. They moved through the library to it's entrance and were led to one of the main halls. The library was at the end of this particular hall and an exit was right next to them. They took it and went outside.

The outside of M.A.G was designed much like a cul de sac with seven buildings. After you walked up a hill that was where the road and parking lots were, the main campus was right in front of you. On either side of the main campus were their two science buildings that housed more than science classes. The two buildings at each end were the two dormitories that students used. The building on the left between the science building and dorm A, as Kwandao called it, was the sports hall. The building on the right between dorm b and the other science building was the school's restaurant/cafeteria.

"If you go right down the hill there, not all that far from here is a small hospital." Kwandao said to Jamie and Knowledge.

"Good. Which one of these dorms are yours?" Jamie asked.

Kwandao pointed toward dorm B. "I'm in room 218, on the second floor."

"As if there'd be a room on the first floor numbered 218..." Knowledge mumbled under his breath. Jamie shoved him down the hill because he saw that Kwandao heard him and saw that flash of silver in her eyes.

"I'll be back when I can." Jamie called back to them. Natasha waved to him as he went.

"Question." Janet asked, she looked at herself and the others. "Kwandao, this is a all girls school, right?"

Kwandao nodded. She followed Janet's eyes and saw she was staring at Vega. Kwandao didn't get what she meant.

Natasha looked from Kwandao to Vega and immediately picked up on it. "Ah, I got it. I'll take care of him."

Vega took a step backwards. "If one of you think you're gonna turn me into a girl, you can forget it."

Natasha seemed to turn the idea over in her mind for a moment, but then smiled sweetly at Vega. "Nah, your shoulders are too big for a girl, Vega. I guess the best thing to do…"

She slid in close to him, hooked her arm around his and gave him big, puppy dog eyes. "…is to let everyone know you're all mine while all the staff are away, baby."

Kwandao blushed so hard she looked like she got hit with a steam gun, but Janet was doubling over in laughter. Poor Vega, though, couldn't do anything but get dragged into the dorm with Natasha on his arm.

* * *

><p>Hillcrest Hospital - 11:10am<p>

Jamie was a wreck.

He and Knowledge had found the hospital easily enough, got checked in easily enough, and Knowledge was being tended to easily enough. Well, easily enough considering his circumstances. But for Jamie, the wait was killing him. No doctors or nurses had even passed through the area where he was supposed to wait. No receptionist either. Knowledge had left his side more than a hour and a half ago.

And right now, he was looking at a breaking news report about how the police had taken Terry into custody.

He had meant what he'd said about not having to see Terry on death row. He knew, and he imagined that Knowledge and Terry didn't, that this was serious business. It became something completely different when you stole from another country's government. Which is what they'd been accused of doing. They knew they were innocent, but the odds of proving it were low right now. They could be extradited to China to face _their_ standards for breaking laws, as well as their own countries.

"Mr. Felix Anderson?"

Jamie had to remind himself to answer to that fake name he'd given the hospital when he brought Knowledge in. He had no idea if Knowledge had done the same. The woman that called his name was a older woman, likely in her 50's or so. A blonde with curly hair that came down to the middle of her neck. She had the appearance and attitude of someone that had seen a lot of sick people in her career; totally professional yet emotionally detached.

"Yes?" Jamie said nervously, extending his hand to shake with hers.

"I'm Dr. Danielle Busse. I've been handing the care of your friend Catravious."

_He used his real name._ Jamie thought to himself.

Dr. Busse continued, "Let's head to my office."

Jamie didn't like the sound of that, and his heart fell with each step he took. They walked what ended up being a short distance to the next set of doors in the hallway which was her office. She held the door for Jamie as he stepped in. A nice wooden desk that was neatly organized was off to the side with two seats in front of it. A chair for her sat on the other side and a small computer station was behind the desk. He took a seat for himself and she sat behind her desk.

"How are you today?" she asked.

"I've had better days…" Jamie answered truthfully.

"I can imagine." Dr. Busse replied, opening up a manilla folder she'd brought into the office with her. "Your friend, Mr. Collins, is fine right now. He's still recovering right now from the anesthetic we used when we treated his eye. I expect he should be ready to leave once we're done here."

"And his eye?" Jamie asked.

Dr. Busse paused for just a slight second.

"Can you save his eye?"

"I'm sorry." she replied. "It was completely ruptured. The first aid put on it helped to keep it from being infected but it's truly not salvageable. Not even the best surgeons in the country would be able to save his right eye."

Jamie felt the weight of the world on his shoulders at that point. "Oh, man…"

"What relation do you have to Catravious?"

"I'm a friend of his."

"And what happened to him to get him this way?"

Jamie thought quickly. "He got jumped. He was trying to protect some of his friends from some people and got into a fight with them. One of them drew a knife and cut him."

Dr. Busse leaned back into her chair. "Funny. That's not what he told me."

_Damn…_Jamie thought to himself. Aside from that, he kept silent for now. And he could feel Dr. Busse's eyes on him, like she was hunting him.

"You can tell me the truth." she said in a warm voice.

Jamie wanted to roll his eyes, but didn't. "You wouldn't believe it." Jamie said instead.

"Try me."

Jamie chewed on that, then decided to reverse roles. "How about you tell me how you're so believing."

"Well, that came from me trying to get that tennis ball away from him. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it fly through the air into his hands. Plus the fact I couldn't pry the damn thing from his open palm."

"The Millennium Eye…" Jamie breathed.

"So that's what you call it."

"Yes."

"So now that we're getting somewhere, how did your friend really get that cut over his right eye?"

Jamie exhaled deep. "Doctor, it pretty much happened like I said. Only…only that he was in China preventing two other people from being tortured. He put himself between them and their captor and she cut him."

Now the doctor bolted upright. "China?"

Jamie nodded.

Dr. Busse consulted her notes. "That can't be…a wound like that would have at least scabbed over more if you were on the other side of the planet and just now came here."

Jamie didn't want to go too far into detail with her. "That's another story. Look Doctor, I feel like I can't lie to you if I want Knowledge to get better."

Dr. Busse leaned back into her seat, crossing her arms. "You could lie to me and it wouldn't matter whether I would've or wouldn't have treated Catravious. But I feel like you're not lying to me."

"I'm not." Jamie reaffirmed.

"Good." she said, taking the papers she had and shifting them to the side of her desk where a paper shredder sat over the top of a trash can. Jamie and her locked eyes as she took them and sliced them into ribbons.

"You probably don't realize it, but you and your friends helped out my daughter some time ago and I'm eternally grateful for it."

"Huh?" Jamie blurted out, just as confused as to why she destroyed those papers as to why she was telling him he helped her daughter out.

"Do you remember an incident downtown some time ago? A young girl that was taken hostage?"

Jamie thought about it, but it didn't take long for him to recall the memory of what would have been Terry's first encounter with Re'-Sha. Re'-Sha had taken a girl hostage in the public library and had demanded that the police send her Terry or else she would kill the girl. This all happened just prior to Terry receiving the Millennium Puzzle and the intervention by Shadi into their lives.

"Wait, you mean that girl-" Jamie started.

"Was my daugher. Elise Busse. She was at that library studying when that girl abducted her. Afterwards, she told me about the boy that saved her. At some point, Terry reached out to her again after she'd been released and offered whatever he could to her to help her get over that experience. Including help from you two."

Jamie swallowed hard and wanted to sing 'It's a Small World After All' aloud to himself, but didn't.

"When I heard on the news about how you boys had supposedly robbed a museum, I didn't want to believe it. That seemed so far from what I had come to know of Terry from my daughter."

Jamie spoke up, "Doctor, that wasn't us. That wasn't any one of us in that video they showed. So we're trying to clear our names by getting to the real thief. We had him in China, but-"

Dr. Busse held up her hand, halting Jamie from going any further. "Jamie, I believe you. I believe what you're telling me, even if it's pretty farfetched. But I do have to get back to work before I'm missed."

Jamie stood with the doctor and moved with her to the door. She gave him a business card. "If you need anything, don't hesitate to call me. Terry saved my daughter, so when you see him, please let him know I want to return the favor anyway I can."

Jamie looked the doctor over once more. He realized that he probably was right to say she was professional and emotionally detached, but only when she wasn't talking about something related to her family. She had cupped her hands over his when she gave him the business card and she seemed almost desperate to help Terry. It warmed Jamie that the good deeds Terry had done had reaped some rewards.

"I'll let him know, Doctor." Jamie promised as the two of them stepped out into the hallway.

"I'll have one of the nurses escort Catravious out to you. Don't worry about a bill or anything, though. As far as anyone knows, you never were here." she said, turning on her heel and heading into the hospital.

* * *

><p>"Mr. Collins, are you awake?"<p>

"…"

"Mr. Collins?"

"Yeah." Knowledge rolled himself off the side of the exam table, still waking up. He found his memory of the last couple of hours fuzzy. Once Jamie had led him here, he'd been seen to immediately, checked over by a nurse and carted off for one of their better equipped rooms. He remembered the doctor that had worked on him, Dr. Busse…

* * *

><p>"Catravious Collins?"<p>

"Yeah." Knowledge said from inside the exam room. He'd been shimmied into a hospital gown on him and his bandages removed from over his face. He felt, strangely, colder without them. The doctor came into the room, holding a clipboard that she was scribbling in.

"Mr. Collins, my name is Dr. Danielle Busse." Knowledge gave her a nod of acknowledgement. "I can see you've got a severe laceration according to my nurses' notes. BP checks out ok…vitals are stable…"

She droned on and on for a moment with more nonsense that didn't interest him, so Knowledge let his eyes wander and they settled over her nametag attached to her white lab coat.

"Danielle Busse? Why does that name sound familiar?" Knowledge mumbled to himself.

"Hmm…" was all she said. She came close and without asking permission gently pushed Knowledge onto the table. The table was nothing special, but the headrest had a motor function to it that let the operator raise or lower it. Dr. Busse raised it and Knowledge squirmed around a bit. He was looking right up into a set of lights and all at once, every bad movie he'd seen where the patient woke up with the head connected to their butts came to his mind.

Knowledge saw the doctor at the counter off to the side washing her hands all the way up to her elbows and placing clear plastic gloves on. She walked over to him and laid one hand on his forehead to steady him. The other wedged open his right eye with her thumb and forefinger.

"Mr. Collins, how much can you see out of your right eye right now?"

Knowledge closed his left eye and focused on the right. "Honestly…"

"I can tell it's light in front of me. That's it."

"Hmm…" she hummed, and then reached for a machine that looked a lot like the scope doctors used in peoples' ears, but this one had a light on it. She looked into his right eye, then his left, then his right, then back to his left. She didn't ask, but Knowledge still didn't see much.

She then seemed to pay attention to the cut going across his face now. She asked him to scrunch up his face, blink and squint his eyes. "Well, this cut is shallow up here…" she traced her finger from the top of the cut to his eyebrow. "But it gets worse."

Knowledge felt a feeling similar to a rock dropping into his stomach. "How worse?"

She placed a finger right over the top of his left eye. "There are tiny muscles in your face that control your facial expressions. They're small, thin and not very strong all in all. I think one of them was cut. If you looked at your facial expressions on the left side versus the right side, there are differences."

"Big or small?"

"Moderate."

"…keeps getting better and better." Knowledge grumbled.

The rest of the exam was done with quickly and Dr. Busse had Knowledge sit up on the edge of the table while she took a chair in front of him.

"Mr. Collins. Let's talk about your eye now."

Knowledge inhaled, trying to prepare his heart.

"I'll tell it to you frankly and spare a lot of the medical terms on you. When you were cut, it cut into your eyeball and the cornea. Your retinas will not focus either. There's too much damage there that medical science cannot fix. Simply put, you're blind in your eye, Mr. Collins."

_You're blind in your eye._

He suspected it to be the outcome, but its completely different when its someone that's trained telling you that as opposed to your mind. He bowed his head, closed his hands into fists and rested his forehead on them. Bitterly, he thought to himself, _it still seems like I can cry out of both of them just fine._

Dr. Busse noticed but didn't seem to take heed of the fact her patient was crying. "There's still bleeding, and I know you can probably feel it. I want to put you under for a little while so I can stitch up your eyelid and the gash on your forehead."

"Doc, I gotta ask. What's the chances of me getting my vision back?" Knowledge asked desperately.

Dr. Busse looked him straight into his eye. "I'm sorry. There's practically no chance."

"…I see." Knowledge said.

"Why did you say my name sounded familiar?" Dr. Busse asked in a way to steer the topic away from this.

Knowledge grunted as he leaned back and laid up against the wall the table was against. "I just know that last name of yours for some reason. I wanna say 'Elise' for some reason."

Dr. Busse's eyes got wide. "H-How'd you know that?"

Knowledge jumped back at her reaction. "Hey, calm down, doc!"

"The police never gave out her name, I want to know how you know her name!"

"The police?" Knowledge said, and then it clicked in his mind. "Wait, doc, wait, wait. Calm down, and I'll tell you."

In a rare twist, the patient was now consoling and calming the doctor. Knowledge got up so he could stand. "Elise was one of the hostages that we're being held at the downtown library some weeks ago when a maniac took it over. That maniac was a girl named Kw-" Knowledge stopped himself. "A girl named Re'-Sha Shiyth. She demanded to have the police bring my best friend to her."

"Terry Hairston?" Dr. Busse asked.

"Yeah. He came and they played in a duel. As Terry had told me, Re'-Sha had bound two hostages to a machine that acted as a counter. As their life points got lower, these needles that were filled with acid or poison or something got closer to them. He played Re'-Sha to a draw and saved them both. When he told me about it, he said one of the girls' names was Elise Busse."

Dr. Busse seemed to choke up just slightly. Knowledge couldn't tell because she got up from her chair and opened up a cabinet next to his table. "She…she's my daughter. She told me about a boy that came in there that day and saved her. I couldn't go out to find him and thank him for that because the police were trying to protect my daughter from the media."

Knowledge nodded, with a smirk on his face. "Terry's like that. Always looking out for others before himself. He told me and Jamie that he gave her a means to contact him or me or Jamie afterwards if she needed anything."

Dr. Busse had pulled a syringe from the cabinet and had filled it with what Knowledge noted to be a sedative. She gently pushed him back onto the table.

"Then…that must make you Knowledge?"

Knowledge scrunched up his face, unused to an adult addressing him by his nickname.

"Yeah."

"Elise told me all about that day as well as the boy that offered to help her out…" she said quietly. "Catravious, I don't mean to be rude, but I really want to stitch your cut up as well as put some medicine on your eye. This is just something to help you sleep so you won't feel pain. May I?"

Knowledge offered his arm and as she injected him, she spoke. "Catravious, I heard on the news about how you supposedly robbed a -"

"No, that wasn't me. That wasn't us, any of the people you saw. We were setup."

"Your friend saved my daughter and I don't think I can ever repay that debt." she pulled the needle out and stuck a cotton swab over the puncture. "This should let you sleep very soon."

Knowledge nodded, and it probably helped that he hadn't slept much on the plane trip back to here because it wasn't but a few minutes later that it got harder and harder for him to keep his eyes open. Before he closed them, he noticed Dr. Busse fumbling with something in his hand.

"Catravious, let go." she asked.

Knowledge tried to lift his head to see what she wanted. He saw the golden sphere of the Millennium Eye in his hand.

"Cant…won't let me…" he mumbled before his eyes closed.

* * *

><p>Knowledge shadowed behind the nurse as she led him through hallways and eventually back toward some stuff he recognized. But all along the way, he could see other staff for the hospital taking not-so subtle glances at him. He ignored the first few, then he just kept staring at whoever he caught until the looked away. He guessed he didn't look real pretty without a bandage over his cut.<p>

Before long, the nurse stopped and motioned for him to head to the end of the long hall he found himself in. He nodded to her, stuck his hands in his pockets and did as he was asked. He felt something in his pocket, but just as he was about to inspect it, he paused and doubled back when he passed a mirror in the hall.

He ran a hand through his hair to the top of his head to get the bangs out of his face. He got a good look at the work Dr. Busse did for him. The cut, like she said, had been sewn together but his skin around where the cut was was extremely red and stood out plainly against his white skin.

Knowledge sighed deeply, looking out of one good eye at his reflection. He saw the item that was in his pocket was something Dr. Busse must've placed there. An eye patch. His vision on his right side was screwing with the vision on his left. He slipped it over his eye and adjusted his hair slightly so more of his bangs covered the patch. The black patch was easily visible through his hair, but the scar was almost all covered. A little of it slipped past the bottom of the patch.

He noticed through the reflection Jamie had snuck up on him. "What?"

Jamie shook his head. "Nothing."

Knowledge turned to him. "Jamie, can I ask you something?"

"Shoot." he said, guiding him toward the exit.

The two of them stepped out into the day. "I went across the planet to save a guy and a girl that don't even seem appreciative of it. And for my effort, I lost my eye and have this to remind me of it for the rest of my life. Was it worth it?"

Jamie was quick with his answer. "Yes."

Knowledge looked at him with an eye that begged for more than that for an answer. "Knowledge, if you had asked me, you rescued a girl that is losing herself within herself. And you rescued a rival that is lost in himself. Your job's not done yet."

Jamie turned so he was facing Knowledge. "Terry can do a lot of things and he's amazing in his own right. But only you can truly save them, Knowledge. They're still in pain. And if you give up on yourself, you're giving up on them. Don't look at that scar as a reminder of your failure, because you haven't failed. Look at it as a means of connecting yourself to them. A sacrifice that you made for them that you, she and he will have to remember for the rest of your lives."

And just like that, Knowledge felt just a little better about his situation. Because everything Jamie just said made sense.

"How you feeling now?" Jamie asked, hoping he wasn't as moody as he looked.

Knowledge inhaled, "Better, I think. Not 100%, but better than when I walked into that hospital."

"Good." Jamie said, then held out his hand. Knowledge looked down at it quizzically.

"What? You thought that pure, sagely wisdom I imparted on you was free?"


	4. Beware of Urban Legends

The backstreets of Millstone weren't the streets of cities like Baltimore and New York. They weren't dirty and like worlds all in themselves. But they certainly weren't for the innocent and uneducated. Why Xavier found himself here, he wasn't really sure of himself, but he found himself stand outside the entrance to a old arcade. He had decided to go legend hunting through the backstreets of Millstone. He wanted to see about the urban legend of Quentin Squires, but somehow he'd managed to find his way here. He'd heard about the place. It was the favored hangout of a clan of duelists that called themselves D-Light. He'd had dealings with D-Light before.

"Eh…another one of you Prime punks?" he heard from inside the arcade.

"I don't fly Prime's flag anymore." Xavier called out to the voice.

"Oh, is that right?"

Xavier saw three of them come at him from the entrance of the arcade. They all wore duel disks to their arms. Unforturnately, one of them looked familiar to Xavier.

"So how is Kennedy these days, boys? Still cracking the whip for D-Light?" Xavier asked causally.

"Kennedy's fine, boy. You, on the other hand?"

"Aww, you still sore over that duel, Ryan? That was ages ago, and I was probably a lot worse then than I am now."

The one Xavier knew as Ryan stood much shorter than his cohorts. More around the 5 foot area, he was a dwarf compared to the rest of them. He wore square rimmed glasses that he was constantly wiping down with a tissue, a napkin, the side of his shirt, whatever he could get his hands on. While Xavier joked about it, when he had dueled against him last, Xavier recalled it was a tough duel to win.

"Anyway, I was just passing through here. No need to whip out your Duel Disks, boys, seeing as I don't fly Prime's flag anymore."

"Yeah, you said that." Ryan said, then got a evil smirk on his face. "Wonder if it was before or after the ass-whupping that clan master of yours put on you. I heard about that."

Xavier deflected the stab, considering it came from someone he wouldn't listen to otherwise. "It wasn't no ass-whupping, Ryan. But I imagine if I had plugged you into that duel, it would've been a massacre."

Ryan took a few steps closer to him. "There's one sure way to find out about that."

Xavier considered it. "Tempting as it is to take down the top tier of D-Light…I'll pass, fellas."

Xavier turned his back to Ryan and walked further down the alley. From behind him, he heard, "You keep your behind away from here, Michael. You ain't got no kind of pass to come and go."

Xavier just waved behind him to the trio.

* * *

><p>Terry wanted to imagine that there was some kind of weight on his neck. It would make a fine excuse as to why he refused to look up. He knew he didn't want to look up because that was like acknowledging that he was locked up into a holding cell. If he kept looking down at the linoleum floor, he could imagine he was someplace else.<p>

After the authorities had shooed away the reporters and such, he had all his belongings taken from him besides his clothing. They got placed into a bag and were shipped off to wherever. He wanted to plead with the officer to let him keep his Duel Disk and deck, but felt continued silence was the better plan. Afterwards, he had to pose for his first ever mug shot. They took down his fingerprints, double checked he had no other personal effects on him and then locked him into a square room with a dingy linoleum floor. Benches were along two of the walls. The back wall had a small corner cut into it that made for the bathroom with an equally dingy handsink. Terry had been sitting in the same spot since he'd been thrown in.

Once again, his eyes fell on the single pay telephone in the cell. Maybe he'd seen too many crime movies but he felt like if he made a call to his friends, the police would have taped the phone to get to them. Plus, he wasn't sure they even had them since they'd all gave them up pretty soon after this whole thing began.

There wasn't a clock in the cell, but there were a string of windows along the top part of the wall that connected with the ceiling. From his angle, he could see to one of the officer's offices and see that he'd been held for about 3 hours now.

There was a jingle of keys at the door, but Terry didn't heed it. Nor did he heed it when someone came into the cell without announcing their presence. He just kept his head down.

"Mr. Terry Hairston, correct?"

Terry looked up to see a street clothes officer. The two of them regarded each other for a second before they recognized each other. "Wait." the officer said, "It really is you, huh, kid."

"And you're here?" Terry exclaimed. Terry recognized him as the officer that had called him down to the library when he first met Re'-Sha. A lieutenant named Biggs.

"Fell a long way from grace, kid." Biggs said, shaking his head and stepping in to raise Terry up by the arm.

"Wait, Biggs. Listen to me, I didn't -"

"Not now, kid." Biggs commanded. "You wait 'till we get to where we're going before you talk."

It was a short walk that Biggs pretty much dragged Terry along for. Down the hall and into another room that was dark on the inside. Biggs closed the door on them and must've hit a switch somewhere. A light bulb above a wood table came on that showed there was another man there. He sat at the table facing Terry and Biggs. Even in the dark the man had some sunglasses on his face. White collared shirt with a black suit jacket and pants. He had a manila folder on the table in front of him.

"A'ight, so here's the kid." Biggs said to the guy in the suit. "So what now?"

"Now?" the man asked in a cool manner. "Now you leave, lieutenant."

Biggs moved past Terry and slapped a open palm on the table. It didn't make the man in the suit even flinch. "I ain't your errand boy, Riker."

"This interrogation has nothing to do with you." the man known as Riker said.

Biggs snorted. "My station, my precinct, my shift, and my perp. Whatever you gotta do, I'mma be here to see it. I'll just go over here 'an be real quiet."

Biggs sat himself down in the corner of the room, crossed his arms and waited. His gaze met Riker's but Riker didn't question it. He coughed to clear his throat and stood. "Terry Hairston, correct? My name is Agent Riker."

Terry didn't say anything.

"Please, have a seat."

Terry took the seat as offered. Agent Riker took the seat opposite him. He opened the manila folder and removed a large glossy photo. He slid it across the table to Terry.

"That's you, right?"

Terry looked down at the photo. A still image of him supposedly inside the Millstone Museum's receiving area smirking at a security camera. Agent Riker didn't wait for his response.

"Understandably so, The Peoples Republic of China are not happy that they lent us these rare pieces of their nation's history and we've let them go missing. They are looking for the culprits just as thoroughly as we are."

Terry swallowed hard, not liking the idea of being tied up by some Chinese faction and sent back to China to answer to them. Then, another photo was slid across the table and this one Terry recognized.

"I will presume that you are familiar with this young man." Agent Riker said. "His real name is Liam Chen. He's gone by the alias 'Lim' frequently."

Terry looked down at what was a detailed listing of the essential statistics on Liam Chen, aka Lim. But he wondered why this Agent knew of Lim. Still, he didn't say anything to him and let him keep doing his talking.

"Liam Chen, as we know, is a member of a radical function that call themselves the Shang Dynasty. The Shang Dynasty itself is based on a dynasty before recorded history. And you've had direct contact with him. We're aware he was in the states fairly recently and was the one behind that ridiculous damsel in distress caper downtown on top of Millstone Tower. And that he disappeared. Part of the reason I'm making this visit today is that I want to know what you know as to where he went."

Terry tried, but couldn't shake the nervous pitch his voice made. "What does Lim have to do with this accusation I have of stealing another country's artifacts?"

Agent Riker leaned forward, "Because I know that you were framed and that it was likely Lim that did it. Interpol is already processing information that clears you and the others involved in this of any wrongdoing."

"Say what?" Terry asked.

"When you leave here today, you'll be a free man again." Agent Riker said.

Terry couldn't stop the smile that broke across his face. "Really!"

"Really."

"Really?" came Biggs' voice from the corner.

"Really." Agent Riker repeated.

"Knew it in my gut…" Biggs mumbled aloud. It didn't hamper Terry's new mood one bit.

"But there is something I want you to do for me, Mr. Hairston." without asking for him to agree or not, Riker pulled a whole file from the folder and slipped it across the table. Terry kept his gaze on Riker, though.

"I need to know if you made contact with a certain man." Agent Riker said. "A man that calls himself Savior."

"Savior?" Terry questioned, feigning ignorance.

"A terrorist that my department has been keeping tabs on for quite some time now. He's the leader of this Shang Dynasty and we figure that Liam Chen, or Lim, reports to him. Him and their network of followers have targeted various interests of ours in the name of ensuring peace in the world."

_Nothing I haven't been told…_Terry thought to himself. But something made him hesitant on sharing what he knew of Savior with this man. The sunglasses he supposed. You spend enough time as a duelist, there are certain things that you look for to show weakness. One being the eyes. And this man hadn't removed those sunglasses since he'd seen him. Did he have something to hide?

"Lim mentioned a Savior," Terry said. "But I never met him."

Agent Riker said nothing but Terry assumed he was staring at him through those sunglasses. So Terry played along and stared back for a minute. Agent Riker stood, smoothing out his suit and then pulling a business card from his pocket.

"If you have a change of heart…or just have something else we may find useful about Savior, be sure to give me a call." Agent Riker said cryptically. Terry could tell he knew he was not giving him the full story.

"DXS?" Terry questioned, seeing the initials on the card.

"Department of eXternal Services." Agent Riker said.

"I thought you said you were Fed." Biggs said, putting in only his second comment through this.

Agent Riker gave Biggs a shrug in way of a response. "Mr. Hairston, in a few hours, the local authorities will have everything they need to clear you of this misunderstanding and likewise, the media will get wind of this. As is their usual."

As he put his hand on the door, he looked back. "My advice to you, though…would be to think very hard about who you have and who you haven't seen."

Agent Riker stepped through the door and out of the interrogation room. That left Biggs and Terry alone.

"Good riddance, 'ol nosy stick-in-the-mud." Biggs said, scratching his ear. He looked down at Terry. "Well, kid. Guess you're about free to go, along with the rest of them. Wherever they're at."

"I'm sure they'll be elated." Terry said, trying to not sound like a liar. He got up to do just that, but was stopped by Biggs at the door.

"Nah, you ain't a free bird just yet." Biggs said. "When I got what I need to let you out, I'll do just that. But not 'till then, cowboy. You sit in that chair until I get back." Biggs opened the door to the room and walked out.

Terry paced around the table in the room, turning over the last few things he'd learned. Which wasn't much at all. All in all, now he just had some shadowy part of the government breathing down his neck because they thought he knew Savior. And to be completely honest, all he'd done is seen his face while he was on the ground at his feet. But there was something about Agent Riker that put him off. He trusted his instincts and they told me there was nothing about Riker that was trustworthy in their first meeting.

Terry leaned against the side of the table, then decided to hop up onto it and laid across it. He found a small pull cord next to the light in the ceiling and pulled it. The light went out and Terry laid on the top of the table in darkness, just staring into nothing.

* * *

><p>After his little encounter with D-Light, Xavier found himself still walking through the back streets and alleys of Millstone. Now, he was looking to clear something up that he'd heard of.<p>

Even though the tech for the Duel Disks had been only just introduced to duelists worldwide, urban legends began almost as soon as they came into play. One such urban legend in Millstone was the tale of Quentin Squires, or just Squires. Fascinating how urban legends started so quickly.

Everybody knew that in the last tournament the city had, Battle City, Terry Hairston had been the number one ranked duelist in the competition. Lamar Vega had been number two. The third ranked duelist was someone by the name of Quentin Squires. According the website info, he was a resident of Millstone that had placed well in local tournaments and was, by virtue of a #3 ranking, obviously a strong duelist.

When Battle City was announced, the tale really began. Generally, the story went that Squires was upset that he hadn't earned the number one ranking for the tournament and had set himself a goal. The tournament's requirement was to have 6 puzzle cards in order to gain entrance to the second round. Squires challenged himself to gather three times as many before he sought entrance.

In the end, Terry Hairston, Lamar Vega, Jamie Cantou, Catravious Collins, Janet Rush and Kwandao Kawamura got entrance. They say he had gotten the 18 puzzle cards he wanted but missed the deadline by seconds. The frustration drove him insane. So now he hunts for unwary duelists through the alleys because his newest goal is to beat anyone and everyone connected with that tournament. Especially those six finalists. And just about anyone and everyone in this city that was a duelist was connected with that tournament in some way.

Xavier looked at a wall near him, seeing the image of a Rook chess piece spray painted onto it. This was his symbol, supposedly his last means of a warning. You stayed away from this area if you didn't want to confront him. He saw another person walking toward him, another duelist.

"Went legend hunting, my friend?" Xavier asked, pointing to the image of the rook. The duelist, a guy about his age looked at that image then shook his head smirking.

"Nah, Quentin Squires is just a myth, man. There isn't anything to it."

"Eh, I don't know." Xavier said, looking down the alley. "They say he's possessed, can make the monsters real and really hurt you in a duel."

The guy shook his head again. "Yeah? I heard he made himself a throne on top of a garbage heap, too."

"Would be interesting to meet him…" Xavier said, walking past him and deeper into the alley.

He heard the guy call out to his back. "It's just a myth, probably just some nut job with a Duel Disk."

Xavier heeded the word, but kept on walking. Along with being 'painted' as Squires' domain, there were more than a few duelists that used this area as a sort of 'fight club' of sorts. If you wanted to see it, you'd likely find it here. More than likely the guy Xavier had just passed had come for that reason, too.

A few minutes into his walk, he could hear the sounds of cheering and explosions. He used that as his guide, leading him to what must've been the courtyard of a apartment complex. Nothing remarkable about the courtyard itself, but it was pretty full up with people with a couple of pockets where duels were underway. The people themselves didn't look like bums or anything to dueling.

"Hey, man, wanna buy some cards?" a skinny kid in some greasy clothes said to Xavier.

Xavier shook his head 'no', stuck his hands in his pockets and moved around. Even as he did, he saw another one of rooks on the wall nearby. But he saw a group of kids hanging around it, too.

"Tellin' you man, I saw him!" one was saying, exaggerating with flailing arms and wild eyes. "He came outta nowhere! He looked like a monster, all tore up with rags on and bandages over his face. And he didn't talk either, he just hissed. He wasn't all…"

Xavier kept on walking and the conversation faded. Like the two kids he was speaking to, they didn't believe him. But, he realized, that's how legends and myths got started. Because of kids like them and people like him. He took it, ran with it, and wanted to prove something by going and finding it. Or proving that it didn't exist.

Xavier left the courtyard through a different exit. Just as he did, off to his right was a narrow alley barely big enough for two trash cans to fit inbetween. Toward the end of it, he thought he'd spotted movement from someone. After considering it a moment, he shuffled into the narrow space and moved toward the end. But before he got there, he heard voices and that made him stop cold.

"A duel, you said?" one voice was saying. It sounded street savvy.

"I-I win, you let me go? And…if you win you-"

"I win, and you gonna gimme what I wanted."

"I-I can't do that!" the second voice was strained, scared.

Xavier had edged his way forward toward the corner. He laid himself flat against the wall and peered around the corner. He saw one guy, a middle aged man that was balding, cowering and clutching a Duel Disk and a briefcase. The other man was a black guy that had his back to Xavier. The only distinguishable feature about the man was the dreadlocks he wore.

"You don't gimme what I want old man, then you ain't going to be able to stand much longer." Dreadlock warned. "But hey, I'm a man of my word. You beat me, you walk outta here scott free. That's all you gotta do."

Baldy seemed to turn it over in his mind. He set the briefcase down and put his Duel Disk over his arm. "You-you promise?" He could barely put together a sentence without stammering.

"Just duel, old timer." Dreadlock said, "If I wanted, I could just take what I wanted off ya. We gonna do this like duelists."

Xavier saw the guy with the dreadlocks draw out five cards and then a sixth. "I'll set two reverse cards. Then I'll summon Solar Flare Dragon (1500/1000) in attack mode."

_Solar Flare Dragon._ Xavier thought to himself as he watched the monster appear. A dragon with a mane of flames, burning red eyes and skin that looked more like lava _That all but confirms what dreadlock's deck is about. Burner. Using card effects that inflict damage to your opponent as your means of defeating your opponent. Solar Flare Dragon itself can inflict 500 damage to its opponent in the End Phase._

"I'll end my turn. And right then, Solar Flare Dragon's effect will kick in. It'll inflict 500 damage to you." Dreadlock announced, as Solar Flare Dragon's mane expanded out and bits of flame rained down on Baldy.

Baldy - 3500  
>Dreadlock - 4000<p>

"My turn. Draw!" Baldy called out. He seemed a lot more focused and not nearly the nervous wreck as before, Xavier noticed.

"I'll play the Field Spell Card, Clear World!"

Xavier was extremely lucky they didn't catch the sharp inhaling of breath that he did when Baldy played his card. Clear World was a extremely difficult card to deal with. But it would certainly make for an entertaining duel with all the things that it could do to liven up this game.

Baldy continued. "I'll summon Field Commander Rahz (1600/1200) in attack mode!"

Even before the monster could fully materialize on the field, Xavier saw Dreadlock reaching for the trigger of one of his reverse cards.

"Reverse card, Open! Slip Summon!"

Dreadlock picked a card out of his hand. "I can play Slip Summon when my opponent summons a monster. It'll let me special summon a level 4 or lower monster from my hand in face up defense position. I'll summon another Solar Flare Dragon!"

A twin of the first dragon appeared on the field besides Dreadlock's first one but curled up to show its defensive nature. "But with two of them on the field, your attacks won't work!"

_Indeed,_ Xavier thought. _Another effect of Solar Flare Dragon is that it won't allow you to attack it as long as there's another Pyro-type monster on the field. With two Pyro-type monsters that have the same effect, this is as good as a lock down. Baldy can't attack and the next turn, Dreadlock will likely re-summon that monster to cement the lock down._

Baldy seemed to turn this over in his mind. He was staring at the two monsters then he slipped three cards out of his hand. "I'll set three reverse cards. I'll move to my end phase. In order to keep Clear World on the field, I have to pay 500 Life Points in my end phase, so I'll do that. End turn."

Baldy - 3000  
>Dreadlock - 4000<p>

"The other effect of Slip Summon kicks in now." Dreadlock said, as one of his dragons started to turn itself into a rope of fire that faded to nothing. Looked like he had the card in his hand. "It's returned to my hand in the end phase of the turn I summoned it."

Dreadlock drew another card from his deck, glanced at it, put it in his hand and slapped the card he'd been holding back onto his Duel Disk. "I'll summon Solar Flare Dragon again to the field in attack mode. Now, I'll flip up Bad Reaction to Simochi."

Xavier rubbed his chin. If there was a doubt as to whether this deck was a burner of some type, it was gone now. Bad Reaction to Simochi's effect would turn all effects that would increase Baldy's Life Points into damaging him for the same amount of points. And there were plenty of cards that did that in the game.

Dreadlock made a show of removing a card from his hand and slamming it home in his Duel Disk. "Activate Spell Card, Soul Taker!"

Xavier watched the backside of a card appear on Dreadlock's field and a transparent, violet, clawed hand shot out of it and embedded its fist inside of Baldy's monster. Dreadlock mocked his opponent. "Soul Taker will destroy Field Commander Rahz but it would normally increase your Life Points by 1000 for that. Today, through, with Bad Reaction to Simochi on my field, you'll take 1000 damage."

"Reverse Card, Open! Quick-Play Spell Card! Ring of Defense!"

Just as Baldy called out the name of his reverse card, Rahz exploded violently, spewing ropes of flame across the field. There were a few that headed backwards toward Baldy, but they were parried by the spinning four pronged shield on his field. "Ring of Defense won't keep my monster Rahz from being destroyed, but it will negate any damage your combo would've inflicted on me."

"Don't matter." Dreadlock said, flipping a hand through his locks. "I'll set a card and go into my end phase. With two Solar Flare Dragons on the field, I'll hit you for 1000 damage."

Dreadlock - 4000  
>Baldy - 2000<p>

Baldy pointed back at him. "Clear World's effect activates now!"

"What?" Dreadlock asked almost casually.

"Clear World has effects related to each attribute of each monster we have on our fields. In your case, your attribute is fire. When you have a fire attribute monster on your field, you'll take 1000 damage!"

Dreadlock - 3000  
>Baldy - 2000<p>

Dreadlock must have been unaware of Clear World's full range of effects because demanded to know why he didn't take damage either.

"Clear World's effect is different for earth attribute monsters, like Rahz was. When there's a earth attribute monster on the field with Clear World active, the controller must destroy a defense position earth attribute monster in their standby phase. Rahz was always in attack position so the effect doesn't harm me."

Dreadlock made a 'tch' sound. Baldy drew his next card and immediately showed his opponent his Pot of Greed Spell Card, the other card he'd had in his hand.

"Needs no explanation." Baldy said when he drew two cards from his deck.

Now, Xavier noticed, he seemed hesitant. He was fidgety and he could see his free hand shaking just a little. And his breathing quickened. _Did he draw something good?_

"I'll…" he started, then stopped.

Dreadlock sneered at him. "You'll what, old man?"

"I'll summon the tuner monster, Chaos End Master (1500/1000) in attack mode!"

"Tuner monster?" Xavier whispered to himself aloud. "There's no way…!"

"That's right…" Dreadlock said, "Show it to me, old man!"

Baldy seemed to get egged on by that and forcefully slammed a card into his Duel Disk. "Spell Card, Monster Reborn! I'll revive Field Commander Rahz (1600/1200) in attack mode!"

Dreadlock seemed to watch the two monster appear saying, "Level 3 and Level 4..."

Baldy shot his hand into the sky. "Clear World's effect activates! Whenever a player has a light attribute monster on their side of the field, they must play with their hand open to their opponent. I only have one card…"

Xavier peered closely at it. "Junk Barrage? An Equip Spell?"

Baldy said, "Level 4 Field Commander Rahz (1600/1200) and Level 3 Chaos End Master (1500/1000)…Tuning!"

Chaos End Master glowed white for a few moment and then disappeared, being replaced by three green rings that hovered around the transparent body of Field Commander Rahz.

"Seven destinies dance across the battlefield. Listen to their roar to the emperor! Synchro Summon!"

Dreadlock was ignoring it all. "Hurry! Show it to me! Your synchro monster!"

"Bow to none…Seven Swords Warrior! (2300/1800 L7)"

_Seven Swords Warrior? Synchro monsters!_ Xavier was screaming to himself in his mind. _These cards haven't even been released yet! They were supposed to come out later this year._

Just like that, this whole scenario clicked for Xavier. He was watching a holdup, a Yu-Gi-Oh! holdup for this guy's synchro cards.

"Beautiful…" Dreadlock was saying to himself. "That would look awesome in my deck!"

Baldy didn't acknowledge him. He seemed more focused on winning, and Xavier couldn't blame him. "Reverse Card, Open! DNA Surgery!"

That forced Dreadlocks to put his attention back on his opponent. "What, now?"

"DNA Surgery allows me to change all monsters on the field and all monsters that will eventually be summoned onto the field to change their original types to a type that I select. I'll select dragon!"

"Shit!" Dreadlock cursed. He must've realized that with his two Solar Flare Dragons (1500/1000) no longer pyro-types, their lockdown effect was no more. Now they were two inferior attack strength monsters that were opposing Baldy's Seven Swords Warrior (2300/1800).

"I'll equip Junk Barrage to Seven Swords Warrior!" Baldy announced, which only caused his monster to glow white for a few moments before it seemed to return to normal.

"Battle! Seven Swords Warrior, (2300/1800) attack Solar Flare Dragon! (1500/1000)"

The warrior calmly reached for its sword but in a blazing flash, he unsheathed it which let loose a white sickle of energy from its edge that raced across the field and mercilessly beheaded the fire dragon before it exploded into polygons that blasted back at it's duelist.

Dreadlock - 2100  
>Baldy - 2000<p>

"Ugh…not yet!" Dreadlock grunted, pumping his fist to his reverse card. "Reverse Card, Open! Backfire!"

The card opened and even before it could fully materialize, it shot out a fireball that screamed across the field toward Baldy. "Backfire is a Continuous Trap Card I can activate when one of my fire attribute monsters are destroyed. My opponent immediately takes 500 damage!"

The fireball struck Baldy dead on the chest, causing him to stagger backwards and gingerly hold his torso.

Dreadlock - 2100  
>Baldy - 1500<p>

"Rgggh! Junk Barrage effect activates!" Baldy roared, pointing to some of the rock pieces of Solar Flare Dragon that hadn't disappeared with the rest of it. They started circling around Dreadlock as if he was the center of a tornado.

"When a monster that's equipped with Junk Barrage destroys a monster in battle and sends it to the graveyard, it inflicts damage to my opponent equal to half of the destroyed monster's attack power!" Baldy watch with what seemed to be a little pleasure as the hunks of rock started raining down on Dreadlock. He tried shielding himself with his arms, but it didn't help.

Dreadlock - 1350  
>Baldy - 1500<p>

"Heh, I'm still standing, old man." Dreadlock said. "Your synchro monster is gonna be mine!"

"You sure of that?" Baldy challenged. "I haven't even used Seven Swords Warrior's greatest ability yet."

"What?" Dreadlock said, watching, along with Xavier as Seven Swords Warrior turned to face the Equip Spell Card that was behind it and pointed its sword toward it. Now all parties were confused when the card started to vanish and get absorbed into the sword. But the card promptly reappeared but the glow that the card had put into the sword hadn't diappeared.

Baldy explained, his voice rising. "Once per turn, when Seven Swords Warrior is equipped with a Equip Spell Card, it inflicts 800 damage to my opponent!"

Dreadlock didn't stand a chance to even evade Seven Swords Warrior as it almost disappeared and reappeared above his head and brought down the sword over him.

Dreadlock - 550  
>Baldy - 1500<p>

"Seven Swords Warrior has even another ability, but it isn't worth it to use." Baldy stated. "End Phase. I'll give up 500 of my Life Points to keep Clear World on the field. End turn."

Dreadlock - 550  
>Baldy - 1000<p>

Xavier tried to still his beating heart. He felt like with the silence that had set on the field, it was beating so loud he'd be found out. _If this is the power of just one synchro monster…then when the rest hit this game, it will change things. Forever. Advance summoning, rituals, hell, even my fusions are hard pressed to beat the power of just this one synchro monster. Baldy has set himself up pretty well._

"My turn. Draw!" Dreadlock ripped his card free, glanced at it and then picked another out of his hand. "Activate Spell Card! Soul of Fire!"

A blue pillar of violent flames surrounded Dreadlock, making his form inside it just a blackened silhouette. "My deck is a burner deck, old man. Whatever the means of generating damage to you is my goal, even if the cost is my own monsters! Soul of Fire lets me select one card from my deck and remove it from the game. I'm gonna choose Flame Viper. (400/450 L2) Old man, you get to draw 1 card, but I can inflict damage to you equal to half that monster's attack power!"

A image of Flame Viper, a snake with a disproportionate head to its body, shot away from the flames and clamped down on Baldy's leg.

Dreadlock - 550  
>Baldy - 800<p>

"I'm gonna leave with that synchro monster! Spell Card! Thunder Crash!"

Dreadlock looked positively wild and feral to Xavier when he was talking. "Thunder Crash will destroy all monster on my field and for each one destroyed, it'll hit you for 300 damage!"

Lighting crashed onto first Dreadlocks field, destroying his Solar Flare Dragon and immediately another bolt descended and danced across the field until it ran through Baldy.

Dreadlock - 550  
>Baldy - 500<p>

"N-No!" Baldy was yelling out, but it was getting drowned out by the fireball that was amassing on Dreadlocks field.

"Backfire's effect activates! When one of my fire attribute monsters are destroyed, you'll take 500 damage immediately!"

When Dreadlock finished his sentence, the fireball launched and made a quick trip across the field to strike Baldy with enough force to send him careening through the air and caused him to hit the wall behind him with a audible 'smack' that made Xavier wince.

Dreadlock - win  
>Baldy - lose<p>

It was quiet in the alley as Baldy might've got hit with enough force to knock him out because we wasn't moving or making any noise. Dreadlock's sneakers crunched on the gravel as he walked over to him, kneeled over his body and seemed to fish something out of his opponent's Duel Disk. Just as he thought, Xavier saw the telltale orange-brown of an effect monster and the pure white of what were synchro monsters.

"…thanks, old man." Dreadlock said, tipping the cards to his still prone body.

Xavier was rooted to his spot. He was fighting himself. A part of him wanted to jump in and take those cards back for Baldy…but at the same time, he'd watched the whole duel from start to finish. Dreadlock had beat Baldy fair and square and outplayed him.

Suddenly, Xavier was yanked from his thoughts when the alley around them went dark. Even through it was afternoon, sunlight didn't shine back here and the lights had been killed. It was near darkness, though he could make out Baldy and Dreadlock if barely. Dreadlock was looking around for something and Xavier pulled back from around the corner. He didn't want to be spotted. He just stared at the wall as five words literally slithered across his skin.

"You are not a duelist…"

"Uwaaagh!"

Xavier, cautiously, peered around the corner again. He let his jaw hang open at the sight. A figure that was considerably taller than Dreadlock had grasped him by the neck, one handed, and was holding him up against the wall. All Xavier could make out of the man (and this was clearly a adult) was he was wearing dark clothing and he had dark hair. But he had no eyes. Clearly made out in the darkness were the man's lack of irises and pupils. Just white eyes.

"Let me go!" Dreadlock all but screamed, trying to do everything he could to get out of the man's firm grip.

The man, instead, flung Dreadlock toward his area and he crashed into a small pile of garbage bags. Everyone heard the scratching of roaches as they scattered when an uninvited human dropped on their meal.

It was as his face was turned slightly toward him that Xavier could clearly make out the mark of a rook etched in red over the man's left eye.

"Don't - Don't hurt me!" Dreadlock screamed, taking off down the alley opposite of Xavier. He watched him go for a second, then turned back to the man and about had his heart jump into his throat when he saw he'd disappeared.

Xavier stepped out from around the corner, looking up the walls, through any windows, every nook and cranny of the alley for that man but didn't see a trace of him. The only evidence was the fact Baldy had his cards back next to his prone body. Xavier knelt next to him and felt his neck.

There was a pulse. But he didn't want to stick around anymore. Gingerly, he picked up the two cards Dreadlock had claimed as his and slipped them on top of Baldy's deck on his Duel Disk. That done, he stood up and returned the way he came until he was right outside the courtyard where he'd come. He looked back down the alley from where he'd come.

"Was that…Quentin Squires?" he asked himself.


	5. Making A Call

Terry must've dozed off on top of the desk he was resting on. It was Biggs that came back in and flipped the lights on on him.

"Get off police property, kid." Biggs said, giving him a shove so he was pushed to the edge of the table. Terry set his feet down and stretched his back.

"So am I free to go?" Terry asked. He saw that Biggs had taken a seat, so he assumed he wasn't quite done with him yet. Biggs motioned for him to take the opposite chair.

"Kid, yeah, you're free to go. I got what I needed." Biggs said. But he seemed to be waiting for something.

"No offense, Lieutenant, but what's the hold up?"

"Imma tell you something about your little visitor Riker."

"…ok."

Biggs leaned back in his seat. "The DXS is interested in you, you already know that. You know what they are exactly?"

Terry shook his head no.

"They're a federal department that if you rang Washington, they'd tell you they don't exist. If I had to compare it to something, I'd say they a lot like that MiB you seen in movies."

"So how come you know about it?"

Biggs deadpanned. "Cuz im a cop and I'm damn good at what I do."

Terry held up his hands in surrender.

"Anyway, the DXS is like a think tank slash group of FBI agents. They enforce…something and for them to be interested in who you seen or ain't seen means your life about to change."

_My life changed a long time ago, Biggs._ Terry thought to himself. "I'll be fine. I told him all I knew about this Savior."

Biggs squinted his eyes. "You're a duelist, right?"

"Y-Yeah." Terry said, not sure of why the sudden change in topics.

"I'm a poker player myself. Mostly texas hold 'em." Biggs said. "And I trust my gut. You haven't said everything you know about Savior. It's all over your face."

"You sure about that?" Terry countered, staring him in the face. "I'm telling you, sir, it's all I know about the guy."

Biggs straightened up and held up his hand with his fingers outstretched. He ticked them off one by one. "One, you ain't called me 'sir' since you've known me, kid. Two, liars subconsciously lay it on thick trying to convince others of their lie. People ain't born knowing how to lie; you think you gotta lay it on thick for someone to not see through you. And three, remember this. 'Weak when you're strong and strong when you're weak.' That's how most amateurs bluff."

Terry wanted to open his mouth again, but clamped it shut. It'd do no good if Biggs was reading him like a book.

"Here's my dilemma, kid. We know each other from that incident at the library with that nut of a woman. I know you got a good heart and the best of intentions. But I know you're holding something back about this. And you're holding something back about a terrorist. I won't sleep easy with you on the street. So until I get me something better for a explanation, I want you to know that even though you're innocent of that museum theft, I ain't closing this case. I'm gonna be keeping an eye on you, believe that."

Biggs stood up and opened the door to the room. "Now…you're free to go, kid."

Terry slowly stood up, feeling like he'd let Biggs down for not telling him everything he knew. And he didn't know why, honestly. He owed nothing to Biggs, and all they had was a shared encounter that drew him into his battle against Re'-Sha. He walked out with his head down like a kid that had been scolded by his parents. Biggs directed him to a desk where his possessions we're waiting for him. Terry checked them over to make sure everything was there, signed the appropriate paperwork and spent a minute getting everything put away.

"You be safe out there, kid." Biggs said as he walked away back the way they'd came. Terry wanted to tell him he would, but Biggs had put a little distance between them. Terry felt it was better to just get out and that's exactly what he did. He stepped through the department's main doors and out into the afternoon air. He stuck his hands in his pockets and noticed something else was there. He pulled it out and saw Biggs had stuck a business card of his own in his clothes. Terry stuck it back in his pocket and sat down on the front steps of the department.

Sure, he was free, but he'd pretty much excommunicated himself from his friends. He wasn't sure where Kwandao had taken them. He wasn't even sure they'd all stayed together afterwards. And while he'd had the great idea of taking the fight to Savior once he'd gotten out, he had no means or even an idea of how to do that.

"Heh…if I was Sharp, what would I do?" Terry said to himself.

He let his mind wander to Sharp as he started walking aimlessly. Sharp had been his 'creation' of sorts. His ideal soldier that could compete with Re'-Sha because at the time, he couldn't. Or wouldn't. Shadi had given him what amounted to a blank slate that knew just about everything he knew about dueling, but his personality was up to him. He made him brash, impulsive, and unpredictable. Almost everything he wasn't.

But from what he understood from this period of time that he'd taken control of his body, Sharp developed something else. A sense of humanity and morality. Well, as much as he could develop for being all of a few weeks old, honestly. When he felt the fear and anxiety that Sharp felt just before Savior ended their duel, he couldn't help but feel bad that his first thought was 'why is he feeling fear when I never told him to?' Up until their encounter in his mind, Terry had though of Sharp as a weapon and not much more.

Terry knew that Sharp was not entrenched in the Millennium Puzzle. He shivered slightly, reminding himself that the heart of Re'-Sha was in the Millennium Puzzle. He supposed that he would be in his mind somewhere. Maybe in that place where they'd met before. But he had no idea on how to get there. Terry thought about it for a second and the only reason that Sharp ended up where he was was that he'd been knocked out badly in a Game of Darkness. He hated to think that the only way he'd have to communicate with him would be if he was unconscious.

But when he thought about it more, he realized that that might actually be the case. When Shadi first came to him with the means to create Sharp, it was immediately after Terry had thrown himself between a Soul Burning Blue-Eyes White Dragon that Knowledge had called upon and Kwandao. The only common denominator between the two was that he was out of it. It was only strengthened when he thought about the curious circumstances that allowed him to switch with Sharp just before he'd been injured by that firewave.

What the hell, he reasoned. He took a look around the small park that was next to the department and made that his destination. He found himself a secluded bench off the beaten path and sat down. He changed and decided to sit down Indian style. He closed his eyes, laid his hands on his knees and just listened to his breathing.

* * *

><p>"Honey, I'm home!" Jamie yelled, pounding on Kwandao's door. He almost stepped back in shock as it was her that whipped open the door, stuck her head out to look up and down the hall and practically flung him inside the room.<p>

"Jeez, Kwandao, think next time you could-"

"Don't do that!" Kwandao cried, stamping her foot down.

"What?" he asked.

"Boys aren't supposed to be here!" She looked around her own dorm like there were eyes in the walls. "If someone found out you were here with me…"

"Aw, it's fine, Kwandao. Wait until you get to college, you'll have boys hanging around your dorm all the time then!" Natasha laughed.

Kwandao looked like she'd been hit with a ketchup missile right to the face she turned so red.

Jamie smirked, remembering how his stepsister loved to impart her words of wisdom on the people younger than her. He took a look around at what a prodigious girls school offered their students in dorms and he was mildly impressed. Nice looking refrigerator, stove…most everything looked pretty new or well maintained…though something drew his attention to a glass trophy case near the bed that was empty. Kwandao was looking for a glass out of her cabinets now while Janet, Vega and Natasha all sat at the square dinner table she had.

"Where's Knowledge?" Natasha asked after she'd had her laugh.

Jamie sobered up his mood a little. "He's here, but he's floating around right now."

Kwandao looked ready for another heart attack. "Floating around?"

Jamie coolly looked at her. "He's probably not ready to meet with you all just yet."

"Just how much damage did he sustain?" Vega asked, which mildly surprised Jamie. Jamie decided he didn't want to sugar coat it for them. The last thing he imagined Knowledge wanted was them to feel pity on him.

"He lost the use of his right eye." he said. "There's almost zero chance he'll get it back. Plus the wound to stitch him up looks pretty bad."

Jamie surveyed the varying reactions, which were all silent. Natasha's eyes got wide and then misty almost all at once. Vega's eyes did widen and he and Jamie's gazes held for a moment. Kwandao looked down and away from everyone but he thought he saw some trembling in her hands. Janet stood up and moved to the bathroom that was literally right behind her and shut the door quietly.

* * *

><p>Alone in the bathroom, Janet stared hard at her reflection. Alone, and just her and her thoughts and emotions, her thoughts told her that she cared nothing for Catravious.<p>

"So why am I crying?" she asked the mirror.

It didn't give an answer, it just wept with her.

* * *

><p>Jamie saw Kwandao cup her hands around the Millennium Ring and look toward the door. "Well, he isn't far away…" she said.<p>

"He's close by. He'll just come in when he feels up to it."

"I feel so bad." Natasha said quietly. Jamie spoke in a voice everyone could hear.

"And that's probably the last thing he wants out of you guys. Knowledge is proud, he doesn't like for others to mope about his shortcomings."

The door suddenly burst open and nearly blindsided Jamie.

"Damn right I don't want your sympathy over this!" Knowledge barked, eyes searching until they locked on Kwandao. "And I damn sure don't want you in my head like that, Kwandao!"

Jamie got a confused look on his face that Kwandao acknowledged and told him about how people with Millennium Items can communicate with each other in a way like telepathy.

"She basically put her eyes in my head when Jamie was talking to you." Knowledge literally growled. He was wearing the patch over his eye and had swept his hair to cover the patch so no one really got a look at it. "And why did you even feel that was necessary?"

Kwandao seemed torn between being the stern woman she could be around Knowledge and the meeker version around everyone else. "You needed to see that."

"Don't do it again, Kwandao. I don't like having you that close to me."

"The feeling is almost mutual."

Knowledge ignored Jamie's warning, barged past him and ripped off the eye patch to stare at her with his own. Kwandao, instinctively, backed up a step and put a hand over her mouth to squelch her gasp. "I welcome you to put me out."

Knowledge felt Jamie put his hands on his shoulders and he allowed him to separate the two of them. "Alright, we need to get this under control."

Knowledge, without ceremony, plopped himself down in the open seat at the dining room table. "I'm under control." he said. He hadn't put the patch back on, but was working on individually closing that one eye. The patch wasn't comfortable to him, so he wanted to practice on just keeping that eye shut. It took diligence to not look in another direction and not want to raise his other eyelid.

"How are you feeling?" Natasha asked.

Knowledge expelled a breath. "I'll live, Natasha, if that's what your asking. I'm not angry, I'm just…I really didn't need a live feed pumped into my brain of what you guys were talking about."

"I'm sorry." Kwandao offered, bowing her head to Knowledge.

Knowledge, to be fair, nodded to her.

"Accepted. But I still don't want you in my head like that."

Vega stood up and Knowledge glared at him. He was moving toward the dorm's door when Knowledge's biting words stopped him. "Does this situation intimidate you so much, King of Games, that you need to get some air?"

Vega turned at looked down for a long moment at Knowledge. The one-time rivals didn't speak, but Vega wasn't malicious in his glare. More like committing the image to memory. "That scar and the fact you lost your vision is because of my incompetence."

Knowledge was drop-dead floored at that revelation from Vega.

Probably the whole room felt the same way, even Janet who'd peeked her head out the bathroom when she heard voices. So no one interrupted as Vega continued. "I never coveted it, but I'm not fit to hold the title of King of Games right now. I even told you so, Catrav-."

Vega stopped short. "I mean, Knowledge."

In the entirety of time Knowledge had personally known Lamar Vega, he'd never addressed him by his preferred nickname. Until now.

"I have something that's been slowly eating at my soul. I need to defeat it." Vega said, staring at Knowledge. "Because after I defeat it, I will defeat you to regain what I lost."

The room went silent.

Knowledge stood up, looking at Vega. He almost felt humbled that a duelist the caliber of Vega decided that he was a opponent for him. But it wasn't in some kind of cocky kind of way, which was not why he felt humbled. It was because Vega was looking to _him_ as the one he needed to beat. For the sake of regaining his lost pride. That was what he felt he would regain by defeating Knowledge. Not Terry, not some contender for national champion, just him. Everyone in that room was a duelist and had pretty much the same idea Knowledge did.

"Accepted, Vega." Knowledge said, but his look turned serious. "But I won't make it easy for you, and you know that."

Vega nodded, reaching for an inside pocket on his jacket and pulling out a card. "I do. But once we're done with Savior, that will be the next thing I do."

Vega looked down at his Red-Eyes Black Dragon. "The very next thing that I do."

* * *

><p>Amid all the hustle and bustle of the day, business went by as usual for the city of Millstone. At any one point in the day on a weekday, you'd find a pretty staggering number of men and women dressed in suits and such.<p>

It wasn't nothing for you to get bumped around or mistakenly turn the corner and run into someone. But it made people wary of being preyed on by pickpockets so they carried such things in their briefcases and backpacks. Away from their body.

It was the same way for Riker. Always. Maybe it was the black suit…

He turned the corner to take him down an alleyway and made a couple more turns before he was well into the maze of alleyways the city had to offer. He stopped at a particular red brick wall and pulled out what looked like a credit card. He flipped it through the air, allowing a scanner to read the code on it and open up a small passageway in the brick that led to this area's hidden offices for the DXS.

Technology had advanced in this day and age to render monsters from a card game in any place two kids wanted to have a duel. It was nothing for someone to get their hands on equipment like wireless card scanners. All it took was for one to get close enough for just a moment. An instance where someone mistakenly bumps into provided ample time for someone like a Rapier to scan Riker's keycard. And it just took creative tailing for a team of Rapiers to keep tabs on him as he made his way to what was the DXS' base of operations.

"We have the codes, Rina." one of the Rapiers said into a cellphone.

"Excellent. And you have the location?"

"Yes. Should we go in?"

"No." Rina's voice commanded sternly. "Set up posts and monitor that location. For all we know, it may be a feint and the agent is trying to bait us. I will rely on you to make the determination that that location is their base, Lim."

The man that had succeeded in luring Sharp and his friends to China straight to Savior's doorstep ended the call and said to empty air, "Very well."

* * *

><p>FIVE DAYS PASS<p>

* * *

><p>"Is he asleep?"<p>

"Naw, he's doing that meditation thing again."

Terry gritted his teeth, wanting to swat Natasha and Jamie away. He was sitting cross-legged with his hands in his lap, fingers laced together.

"Let Terry alone, he's doing something important." Terry heard Knowledge say to the others and he was appreciative. But he felt something tickling him below his nose and before he could stop it, he let out a voracious sneeze. He meekly looked around the dining room he, Knowledge, Jamie and Natasha had sat themselves in.

"Sorry."

Terry caught Natasha playing with a lock of her hair. When their eyes met, Natasha just smiled at him, while Terry rolled his eyes. He uncurled his legs and sat down properly in the booth they were at.

"Never a moment's peace…"

A waiter came by. "Excuse me."

"Yes?" Terry said, eyes hopeful.

"I spoke with the chef, he says he's rather busy right now and-"

"And you tell it exactly like I said it, damnit!" a rough voice was heard saying through the double doors that led into the kitchen that were right next to their table.

"Ahem…" the waiter cleared his throat. "To quote, 'I'm in the middle of my rush, I ain't got time to baby-sit' is how he put it."

Everyone looked at Terry, since he was the one who'd brought them all here. He thought for a moment, scooted past Natasha, winked at the waiter and strolled into the kitchen amid the panicked protests of the worker.

Terry may as well have stepped into another world. Instead of the dimmed lights and quiet atmosphere beyond the door behind him, this was a sea of humanity. Bright white flourescent lights beamed down on maybe seven other servers that were chattering away at either themselves, the cooks that were behind a stainless steel table or with a slightly older man in a suit shirt and black pants.

"The hell?" someone said, and all eyes turned to Terry.

A server tried to hook his arm. "Sir, you can't be back here."

Terry ignored him. "Stone! We need to talk!"

A voice from somewhere in the mass of cooks came back, "Beat it! You ain't cooking so you ain't nothing but a table number to me right now!"

The owner of the voice, Jurivicious Stone, pushed past the last cook so he could look at who was calling him. And it was when the two of them made eye contact that Stone's face softened a little and he seemed to cool off.

"Jonas!" Stone called out, "I'm taking fifteen, cover my station."

* * *

><p>At the table Terry had just left his friends at, there was now a new person sitting with them. Jamie, Stone and Natasha made up one side of the booth while Knowledge and Terry sat on the other.<p>

"Mickey needs to fix these damn booths…" Stone grumbled. He snapped his fingers to a passing waiter and demanded a cup of coffee.

"Long time, no see, Stone." Terry said, almost hesitantly. He was no less intense than the last time they'd met in Battle City. He was probably more so now; he was being pulled out of his job and his element and he understood how short he was with people.

"Hmph."

"Um…how's it been?"

"Busy. Real busy."

"How's the kid?"

That earned Terry a dangerous sideways glance.

"She's fine."

"And you?"

Stone sighed. "Fourteen."

"Huh?" Everyone at the table said in unison.

"You got fourteen minutes of my time left, young blood. You'd best make the most of it." Stone said as his coffee arrived and eyed the waiter for tallying a little too long at their table. Probably wanted to know more about whoever could get Stone out of the kitchen.

"OK, Stone." Terry said, "I need to talk to you about a couple of things. About the Millennium Items and what you might know of a -"

"I see you lost yours." Stone said flatly. "Is that what this is about? How you go about getting it back?"

Terry paused. That hadn't been what he wanted to ask but that information would be helpful.

"Ante." Stone said.

"Ante?"

"You anted up your item against someone and lost. The only way you're gonna get it back is to ante up against the new owner and win. Plus beat whatever conditions they may throw at you."

"You mean a Game of Darkness…" Terry shuddered at that. He hadn't considered that and the advantage that it gave Savior. He recalled how the Millennium Items were taken by the strongest. There was no 'inheriting' an item. "Yes, but that's not what I wanted to ask you about. I want to know what you know about Savior and the Shang Dynasty."

Stone had been sipping coffee and froze.

"What do you know about it?"

"You're mixed up with them?"

"It's complicated."

"It's never simple with you, is it, Terry?" Stone sat his cup down, leaned back and crossed his arms. He looked like a poker player and was deciding if he'd just been bluffed.

Terry exhaled. "I've got nothing to go on, Stone. They were the ones that set me up for this museum robbery not all that long ago. Yeah, our names have been cleared, but I still don't want to leave the Millennium Puzzle in that guy's hands."

Stone shook his head. "Your problems ain't gonna stop there with the Shang involved." He was about to say more but Terry saw he took notice of Knowledge. Probably more of the scar that he sported. He wasn't wearing his eye patch again. Knowledge, he noted, seemed to prefer to walk around with just one eye open instead of placing the patch over his eye. Maybe he didn't want to look handicapped.

Or maybe it was something else that Stone saw in Knowledge. Knowledge hadn't looked any place besides at Stone since he'd sat down.

"The Shang ain't nothing but trouble for you, Terry." Stone explained. "And you looking to get mixed up with them is lunacy."

"The Shang took something very important away from me, Stone. I will get it back."

"So you say."

Terry massaged his forehead. "Are you still on this crap that I don't have what it takes? You know what? Forget it. I don't need to put up with that."

But something in Stone's gaze kept Terry from getting up. A kind of semi-serious but amused look was on his face. "Alright."

Terry relaxed.

"The Shang Dynasty. If I had to compare it to something, you're talking of a bunch like the Illuminati."

"Except we know these guys are real." Knowledge said.

"We all had dealings with them." Natasha said.

"Very serious dealings. Life or death dealings." Jamie said.

Stone looked at them all in turn. "So you know this ain't no BS to go looking for them. But they go deeper than that. When I say they're like the Illuminati, I mean it. They got their hands in everything."

"And what do you know about Savior?" Terry asked.

Stone shook his head. "Don't know anything about a Savior."

"Damn!" Terry slapped his hand against the table.

"I know more and I know less than what you think I know, kid." Stone said.

"So how do you know anything at all about the Shang?" Terry returned.

"I know about their special forces more than anything." Stone admitted. "They call themselves Rapiers."

Knowledge's gaze perked. He'd heard that name before. "Rapiers?"

Stone nodded. "The Shang Dynasty is like a country without land. Their people have the Rapiers as their contacts with 'our world'. They get themselves trained in any number of ways. Hackers, chemists, economists, politicians…duelists. Whatever they need to become good at to get what they want. They go out and become big dogs in their fields."

"They…train duelists?" Terry wondered aloud.

"More than just duelists. You just probably happen to be mixed up with whatever unit or squad or whatever of Rapiers that are duelists. I'll tell you one thing that might hit home for you. The best duelist this area has to offer would be who?"

"Lamar Vega." Natasha said immediately. Terry looked offended by that comment.

"Get over yourself, Terry. You beat him, but you're not better than him."

"No." Stone said. "Not him."

"Me?" Terry asked hopefully.

Stone rolled his eyes. "Definitely not you."

Terry squeezed his hand into a fist below the table.

Everyone was silent for a second before Natasha came up with another name. "Darren Ledger?"

"Bingo."

Darren Ledger was long considered the man to beat in the dueling world. He was thought of as one of the best duelists North America had. Then Lamar Vega came around two years ago. Vega made his splash by winning the Convening Gamers Invitational, better known as CGI. A tournament that brought gamers of various genres to one place to best each other, but only by invite. Darren Ledger was invited but hadn't entered that tournament and Vega won it. Ledger was also absent from the Duel King tournament that found Vega in the final match against Natasha, which he also won.

At the following CGI tournament last year, Vega was finally pitted against Ledger himself and he beat him. He became the first duelist to win CGI two years in a row and he carried the high off that win into last year's Duel King tournament where he beat Natasha and Ledger again to become Duel King champion two years in a row as well. It was these string of wins that encouraged people to title him the King of Games.

"What about him?" Natasha asked.

"I think he's not exactly a citizen of this nation, if you know what I mean."

Natasha didn't believe it and said so to Stone.

"Well, you're the one's playing detectives. You get some free time looking for the Shang? Look into that."

Natasha hadn't believed him, but there was a part of her that had doubts. Frustratingly easily, Stone had planted a seed of doubt in her about Ledger and him being some kind of planted Rapier agent.

"These Rapiers know the game. The last I knew, they were being led by a woman."

"Rina." Knowledge said, butting in. Stone looked at him in surprise. Knowledge ran a finger across his scar.

"She's the one that gave me this."

"I don't know that much about the woman herself. Bits and pieces actually." Stone said.

"So how do you know about the Rapiers, then?" Knowledge asked.

"They came for my little girl, and I fought them off." Stone said.

"Wait, what?"

"Do you really want that old story?" Stone asked. "Because it's probably going to take up the last five minutes you have of my time."

"No." Terry rushed out. But he couldn't think of something to ask him. He didn't know Savior, and what he knew of the Rapiers didn't bring them closer to finding or breaking them.

"Stone, if you had to guess, just how well financed is this Shang Dynasty?"

Everyone at the table did a double take at Jamie's question. But Stone thought about it seriously before answering. "No telling where they get their money from, but they have cash for sure."

Terry thought the same. It had to cost a ton of money to build the kind of hideout Savior used in China.

"What you thinking of Jamie?" Knowledge asked.

"Well, when I dueled Lim, he wasn't no slouch in the game. He was pretty sharp."

"Like I said, they get training on all this." Stone said.

"But I wonder on where they get their Duel Disks and cards from. Duel Disks are not cheap pieces of equipment and we only got ours free for ranking high in the last tournament. Cards can cost you a small fortune to build up a good reservoir to pluck from."

"So what?" Knowledge said. "You want to go stake out Upperdeck? Ask them if they're selling large orders to people with no addresses?"

"No…" Jamie said slowly, but he didn't go any further into whatever he was thinking.

"Stone, I do have one more thing to ask you." Terry admitted.

Stone turned his gaze to Terry and Terry found it made him uncomfortable. Actually, that wasn't right. It was what he wanted to ask that made him feel uncomfortable. "Just before I dueled againt Re'-Sha in the finals of Battle City, Shadi came before me."

"Mentioned him before, I recall."

"He created…I guess a blank canvas in my mind for me to create something to help me fight Re'-Sha. I made another half of me with that, a personality that called itself Sharp. He's the one that really beat Re'-Sha. Well, just before this business with the Shang and Savior started, something happened and he gained control of my body. I never could get it back until at some point in his duel against Savior that…he thought he'd lose and that he'd die. I regained control just before he-well, I got attacked."

"And?"

"I've been thinking that we've only switched control when one of us is unconscious or close to it. But…"

And Terry stopped. He'd gotten through all that explanation and he really didn't have a question to propose to Stone. He just stalled with his friends staring at him because, he thought, none of them knew these things about him. Specifically about Sharp.

Stone looked at Terry for a long moment. "All that to ask me what, Terry?"

Terry couldn't answer.

Stone stood up and waved for a waiter. "You aren't asking me anything. You know that, Terry. All you're looking for is for someone to tell you you're on the right path about this. Can't help you on that. That's your own road to navigate. It's part of growing up."

Terry's eyes burned at Sharp. "Stop that."

Stone told the waiter to comp them for some appetizers and sent him away. "Terry, you think too small. You don't realize that from the time you are born until the day you die you _never_ stop growing up. So go do some more."

* * *

><p>"As much as I didn't care for his conversation, his food's pretty good." Natasha said, nibbling on what the restaurant called salt and vinegar chips; battered and lightly fried green beans tossed in malt vinegar with parmesan dipping sauce.<p>

"Meh." Terry grumbled.

"How do you know him anyway? You never said." Knowledge said between bites of his own appetizer called crab rangoons; cream cheese and crab wrapped up in wontons. Wontons being the same stuff egg rolls are made of.

"He was the guardian of the Millennium Anhk and Tauk when we met in Battle City. He was pretty knowledgeable about the whole thing with Re'-Sha back then. Figured it was as good a place as any to start digging up info on Savior."

"Yeah, but no such luck." Knowledge grumbled, twirling a Rangoon around with some chopsticks.

"Maybe not." Jamie said, popping the Rangoon Knowledge was playing with into his mouth and earning a dirty look from Knowledge. "I think we should pay RJ a visit."

"RJ?" Terry said.

"Yeah. Here's what I'm thinking. Stone said that these Rapiers have access to plenty of money and that they've got different branches or units. Obviously, we've been going up against their branch that duels. I started wondering where they got their cards from."

Natasha said, "What does it matter where?"

"Well, if we knew where, that might bring us a little closer to where Savior's hiding out now. They were using English language cards. They have to be shipped out somewhere. We find out where they're going to, we might just have Savior, too."

Knowledge and Terry's faces brightened at this prospect. Natasha, however, brought them back down to earth.

"Get real, Jamie. Don't you remember? These cards are made for Europe in Europe, too. RJ wouldn't have any kind of access to what Upperdeck may or may not sell in Europe."

That brought a halt to the conversation. Not one of them had the faintest clue on how to even get someone from across the world to help them. No one was moving much so everyone keyed in on Jamie when he pulled out his cell phone and started tapping keys.

"What you doing?" Natasha asked.

Jamie let out a sigh in response.

"Who are you calling?"

Jamie turned his phone so Natasha could see it.

"Oh, hell no." Natasha said immediately. "No way you're-"

"I'm considering it."

Natasha grabbed him by the collar.

"Over my dead body. I'm not trying to have that nut around me again!"

"Natasha, any other day, I wouldn't even-"

"Why the hell is his number in your phone, anyway?"

Jamie paused.

"Well?"

Terry raised his hand. "Um…"

"Shut up, Terry." Natasha barked, then caught herself. "Sorry."

Jamie stood up.

"I'm calling him."

"No!" Natasha tried a desperate lunge for him out the side of the booth, but Jamie was out of her reach. All they heard was him saying 'Hello' to the other person before he was out of earshot.

Terry and Knowledge just hunched their shoulders at each other, dumbfounded. It was obvious Natasha didn't want to talk about it. So they waited in silence.

Ten minutes later, Jamie returned.

Natasha glared at him as he came close. Jamie didn't meet her gaze.

"Ok, so what's up?" Terry asked.

Jamie rubbed the back of his neck. "Well…"

"I'll kill you for this." Natasha spat, looking at her stepbrother with eyes the size of pebbles.

_She probably means it, too…_Terry thought to himself.

"We're…ah, I mean, I think I know of a guy that can help us out. I just called him and he'll help out."

"I sense there's something you're not telling us." Knowledge said.

"Well, he's got some issues-"

Natasha snorted loudly.

"Some issues, but he's a magician with computers."

"A hacker?" Terry surmised.

"Something like that."

"What good is a hacker to us?"

"Well, we already established that the best way we have to track where the Shang went is how their Rapiers get their cards. If they're getting them out of someplace in Europe, he thinks he can track where the large orders are going for us. Maybe that'll lead us to them."

Knowledge shook his head. "And he'll do this out of the kindness of his heart? I doubt it. What does he want in return?"

Jamie smiled. "Nothing."

A period of three seconds of silence passed at the table with Natasha, Terry and Knowledge staring at Jamie before the three of them said in unison, "Bull."

Jamie let out a defeated sigh. "Alright. He'll help out but there's two things he wants. Basically, I gave him a little overview of our situation and I guess the idea of hunting down international terrorists turns him on. He wants to be 'in' on the rest of this and be as involved as he possibly can."

"And you agreed to that?" Terry said incredulously. "I told you all before I brought you into this this would be dangerous, but you agreed to it. You've all got your reasons, but it's a personal stake, too. He's got nothing to do with Savior and the Shang. We botch this somehow and his life is in my hands!"

"I told him all that, too, Terry." Jamie said in a low voice. "He still wants to help."

Terry didn't say anything else, but was grumbling to himself and shaking his head. He stood.

"Not like I got a choice, do I?"

Jamie shook his head.

"Ugh. So let's go see your friend then."

Jamie put a hand gently on his friends chest. "It doesn't work that way. We gotta leave him alone so he can work his magic."

Natasha scoffed. "Pedigree, to be sure, has some tricks up his sleeve."

"Pedigree?" Knowledge asked.

Jamie nodded. "His name is Trent Ronin, but he's like Knowledge and chooses to go by his nickname."

"And how'd he pick up a name like that?" Knowledge asked.

Terry waved him off. "Frankly, it doesn't make a difference. While he's doing that, we've got nothing again."

Knowledge looked at Jamie as if to say, 'I'll want a answer to that later.'

Terry sat back down with Jamie and stuck his hands in his pocket. "So if he's looking into that for us, what do we do now? That's our only lead." He felt his hand brush up against something in his pocket and pulled out the two business cards he'd gotten from Biggs and Agent Riker.

"What's that?" Natasha asked.

"Contact info for this cop and this federal agent."

"Federal agent?" Knowledge said.

"Yeah, I didn't tell you guys that much about it."

"You haven't told us much of anything since you got let out. All you've been doing is meditating." Knowledge pointed out.

"Well," Terry began. "Once I touched down on the ground after you guys vanished with Kwandao, I got arrested."

Terry let out an involuntary shiver, but kept going. "They brought me to a cell and kept me there for a little while until Biggs got me and shoved me in this room with this federal agent, Agent Riker of the DXS."

"DX-" Jamie started.

"Department of eXternal Services." Terry cut in. "From what Biggs told me, they're some kind of think-tank. But they have an interest in the dynasty, too. They know who Lim is and know he orchestrated the event on top of the tower with Natasha. But they seemed to be at a loss on who Savior was."

"Any chance they could help us?" Jamie wondered.

"Naw, not a chance." Knowledge said. "They came to Terry looking to find out what he knew."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Maybe I don't know diddly squat about how the government does it's work, but I don't think they'd let someone they think is even knowledgeable about a terrorist like him out of their grasp. And they did it with Terry. If you ask me, I think they're watching him."

Jamie chuckled, shaking his head. "Conspiracy theorist."

Terry agreed with Jamie, pointing out to Knowledge that they could've held him a lot longer than what they did. That didn't convince him, though.

"You just watch your back, man. That's all I'm gonna say-"

Jamie's phone chirped and all conversation stopped.

"Hello?"

Jamie was silent for several moments.

"You got it?…Several? What do you mean several? Just how many?…Wow…Not off the top of my head…Ok…Ok…Yes, I remember, Pedigree….Ok, bye."

Jamie stood up. "Looks like we're taking a trip to see Pedigree."

Terry stood, but his face showed the question before he asked it. "I thought he needed time to work his magic."

"Obviously, you don't know how good Pedigree is."


	6. The Infiltration

After a uneventful bus trip and a short walk, Jamie led them to a unassuming two story brick apartment building. They all stepped toward the entrance door and, using the apartment register, found a apartment listed for T. Ronin. He punched the buttons and waited him to pick-up.

They heard the connection click, but no one on the apartment side said anything.

"Come on, Pedigree, don't do this creepy crap." Jamie said.

Silence.

A buzzer was heard. He unlocked the door for them.

They filed into the building with Jamie leading the way. There was a long hall they went down until they came to a door that he stopped at. Apartment 8.

"Infinity…It was probably on purpose…" Jamie said, running a finger over the number.

Jamie knocked on the door but was surprised that when he rapped his knuckles against it, it cracked open a bit.

Terry couldn't help but shake a little and backed away from the door, unintentionally bumping into Natasha who'd flattened herself against the opposite wall. Her eyes were locked on that door but she didn't look angry.

"Pedigree?" Jamie said, peeking his head in the door.

"This is too creepy." Knowledge said, now wearing his patch over his eye again.

"Come in. Mind your step." came a voice from within.

Jamie led the way inside with Knowledge and Terry behind him. The apartment was essentially a large studio with an enclosed area off to the left that had the bathroom and kitchen areas. Off to the right was a unmade bed. It was in the corner of this room everyone was staring at. Eight corkboards, four on each wall, were stuffed with papers, images and hasty handwritten notes. On the floor there were numerous, thick volumes of books that had markers in pages and even more notes around them. The desk was probably the only uncluttered thing in the place. Three large flat panel monitors were online with different windows and programs running in them. But the man in front of these monitors was not what Terry nor Knowledge were expecting.

A white t-shirt and faded, grey sweatpants with no socks covered the frame of Pedigree. He looked as old as Terry, Jamie, Natasha and Knowledge combined. When he turned and stood to greet them, Terry and Knowledge both got a good look at him. He stood at barely their height and although his clothes had to be small, they hung loosely on him. His hair was pure white but receding. He'd tied it into a sloppy French braid that came down to his mid back. The most obvious feature to his face was his witch nose; long and crooked and be damned if it didn't have a wart on it. Even from the ten feet that separated him from them, that old man smell wafted into their noses.

But despite all that, he didn't look like no pushover. He didn't move slow for being so thin and his movements were quick and purposeful. His eyes were sharp and just as appraising to them as theirs were to him.

"So where's your sister?" Pedigree asked to Jamie, ignoring Terry and Knowledge.

Jamie looked behind him and saw that Natasha hadn't come in the door.

"She must still be in the hallway."

"Hmm…" he said, striding past them and into the kitchen. Then in a loud voice, he said, "Not my fault you girlies don't read these days."

"Ooh, I'm going to put a restraining order on you, Trent!" Natasha yelled from behind the door.

Pedigree swung the freezer door shut and cradled a tub of chocolate ice cream against his bird chest. "Ha! Sure, lemme find the judge that agrees that you have something to fear from a 82 year old man. I'll definitely want _that_ bloke's number."

Terry couldn't squash the snicker before it left him.

"Anyway," Pedigree said, walking past them and getting back into his chair with his ice cream in his lap. "You boys seem to have gotten yourself in a pickle."

"Wait, one second." Knowledge said. "First, you have to tell me how-"

"What's your name?" Pedigree said instead.

"Its…Knowledge."

Pedigree stood, grabbed what looked like a broken aluminum mop handle with something etched on the side and before they could blink, he rapped it against the side of Knowledge's knee. It wasn't enough to break anything or even bruise him, but it was so unexpected, Knowledge fell in a heap at the stinging sensation.

"You respect your elders when they speaking, boy." Pedigree said, pointing the stick at his chin.

Terry grabbed the end of that stick and pointed it toward his chest. "And if you try that again, I'll make you eat that stick."

"Aw, shove off, boy scout." Pedigree snatched the stick out of Terry's grasp and sat down at his chair. Terry offered his hand to Knowledge but he stubbornly waved him off.

"Like I's said, you boys have yourselves a problem." Pedigree continued. "Jamie told me about it over the phone. You hoping to track down this Shang Dynasty?"

"That's the gist of it." Terry confirmed.

"Well, I's did what Jamie asked me to do…" he slurped on a spoonful of ice cream and kept speaking. "Ah tink ah can elp you."

They all gathered around the back of Pedigree's chair, looking at his center monitor. "It didn't take long for me to act like I was a new customer for Upperdeck Europe and get access to their purchase order websites. I placed myself a phony order just to see how the process worked and traced where the website sends that information. After that, it was just a little process of digging up the right way to open up their shipping and warehousing servers with a FTP. Jamie told me you boys were looking for possibly large orders in Europe. That ain't much of a filter off the thousands of orders these people fill."

Jamie looked closer at the screen. "It really isn't. If that's just by the large orders, there's over 500 of those to choose from!"

"Yep." Pedigree agreed. "So I's did some filtering of my own. I eliminated orders for 1st edition cards, because I's figure these peoples don't want collector's edition cards…"

Pedigree tapped a few keys on his computer and a new screen, much like the same came up, only now the number of potential hits dropped to about 300.

"Then I filtered out any sales to companies I's know is legit. Your stores like a Toys R Us or something…"

Another few keys tapped and the number dropped into 130 range.

"That's about where I stand with what Jamie told me."

Terry rubbed his chin. "Can you filter out orders by location?"

Pedigree looked over his shoulder. "What location?"

"China."

He furrowed his brow. "Why would you want there? That's Asia, not Europe."

Terry shrugged, "Humor me."

Pedigree opened his mouth to say something but didn't. He stuffed another scoop of ice cream in it instead and began tapping keys on his keyboard.

"'Equalizer?'" Knowledge said.

Terry and Jamie turned to look at Knowledge who was looking at the stick leaning up against the desk Pedigree was using. That was what was written on it.

"I haven't been the biggest guy growing up. So when I got into a fight, I looked for something to tip the scales in my favor. Bricks, rocks, rope…sticks." Pedigree said for explanation. "Got it."

Everyone leaned in close. This latest bit of filtering knocked the numbers down from 130 to 7.

"Well, I'll be." Pedigree said. "And all of them were delivered to the same place in Lopnor, China? Look at the little detective."

Knowledge and Jamie shared a high five but Terry remained quiet. Terry wanted to be happy but something stopped him.

"Something isn't right…" Terry mused. "That seems too easy."

"Sometimes it is just that easy." Jamie reasoned.

"No…I need more than that." Terry said, crossing his legs and sitting down on the floor. He heard his friends talking but he ignored them. His instincts told him differently and he never went against his instincts. Each of the results that Pedigree had brought up all came to Lopnor, China. When they were in China, Terry had never been able to figure out just where in China they were. Regardless, it all seemed too convenient. All those orders to one location.

Pedigree flung the now empty carton of ice cream into a trash can. The wall was stained with brown marks. Probably from his doing the same move with other food. He started working on his computer again and he was bringing up screens just as quickly as he was closing them on both his center screen and the other two to either side. Knowledge leaned in closer and saw that Pedigree was still looking at various screens like they'd seen before, but now there were pages that looked like maps and delivery schedules.

"Hmm…" Pedigree said, leaning back and rubbing his chin. "That's odd. C'mere you all."

Terry opened his eyes and stood up, lest he get whacked with the Equalizer and joined Knowledge and Jamie at the desk. Pedigree had arranged the seven orders on his three monitors. Below them, he had one map and a delivery schedule.

"Maybe you're right, kid." Pedigree said to Terry. "You do a little more digging and these orders don't look quite so similar anymore. They do beg to be looked at a little more."

Pedigree didn't bother to explain further so Terry looked at one of the orders. The order itself wasn't all that suspicious. 20 cases of the latest booster box of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards on the market. 1 case made for 12 booster boxes, so this was most certainly in the range of cards they were thinking of. The names of all the orders were different, so that was another differentiation.

Upperdeck Europe gave the orders to a shipping company that took it from their warehouse to the listed address. The only thing was that while the name was the same for all the orders and the general city was the same, the addresses were all different. That was enough to throw more holes in the theory. The icing on the cake was the failed deliveries.

"Each time these cards were delivered," Pedigree was saying. "The delivery boy tried to take them to the listed addresses, but no one showed up to claim them. So their policy afterwards was to keep the deliveries at some local office until someone with proper ID came in, signed for them and left with it."

_But if the Shang could get a private jet from the US to China, I don't think it would be too much stretching to get a few fake ID's._ Terry thought to himself. _Is this how they get these cards? Arranging deliveries but picking them up from a office? _

"Gimme those orders." Terry demanded, deciding that that was as close as he may come.

Pedigree didn't turn to face him. Instead he made a motion of moving his neck to the side with a audible 'pop' of his neck and spine.

"You best watch your mouth." but he did hit a button to print the orders and the delivery schedules and the maps. Terry scooped them up and started studying the maps.

"I think I might've been wrong." Terry said after a moment, picking out two maps and pointing out a forested area that was in the vicinity of Lopnor. "That might be the forest we landed in."

"But wait," Jamie said, "Neither of these have a airstrip."

"True," Terry said, pointing something else out. "But they both do have valleys. Maybe these guys are so good that they can make an airstrip that isn't on known maps?"

Knowledge and Jamie nodded in agreement.

"So that's that. This could be where their cards went to while they were in China." Terry said. "So Pedigree, I have a favor to ask."

"Meh." he said in way of response.

"Can I ask you to do some more of your magic for orders that have a pattern like this from other Upperdeck warehouses?"

"In Asia?"

"No, worldwide."

A sly smirk danced over his face. "You know you're asking me for something that's going to require a lot of my time staring at these screens. What's in it for me?"

Terry started but was waived off by Pedigree. "Don't worry about it. There's not much you kids can do for an old fart like me. It's doing stuff like this that makes me feel alive."

Terry, in that moment, had a change of heart on Pedigree. Maybe he wasn't an ornery old man, just a old man that had -

All of a sudden, and for no reason, Pedigree whacked Terry at the ankles with the Equalizer. He heard him saying something about that being his payment while Terry was on the ground.

_Nope._ Terry decided, rubbing his ankle. _Just an ornery old man._

He stood up, wanting to clock the backside of the man's head, but stopped before he began. Letting out a sigh, he leaned up against the wall. He took partial notice of a breaking news report that there was a fire downtown.

"Man, that looks ugly." Jamie said, watching the same footage. A car had smashed into a storefront downtown and was now on fire. A news helicopter had gotten overhead of the blaze.

* * *

><p>Downtown, two fire trucks were responding to the fire and there were two men holding down a hose while another aimed it for the interior of the building. Three others had climbed the steel fire escape on the side of the building to the apartments above and had evacuated the residents above the store with relative ease.<p>

What was not known was that the three firefighters that had entered were Rapiers.

"Lim, we're in." one spoke into a earpiece. He and the other two quickly slipped out of their fire fighting gear and into the standard all black uniforms of the Rapiers. They all had earpieces and heard their commander speaking to Lim.

"Casualties?"

"None. The civilians were evacuated."

"Good. Proceed with the mission."

Silently, the lead, designated Fox 1 signaled his team to follow him.

* * *

><p>"What the hell is going on? Report!" Agent Riker barked out. He stormed into what was their command room. The entire room was cast in a soft red hue. The facility was running on backup power and all throughout the basement level facility, it felt like a bomb had dropped on their heads. There wasn't substantial damage, but the force of it had knocked computer monitors down, tipped over shelves and rattled the agents there. A young woman nearly half Riker's age stepped in front of him.<p>

"There's been an explosion in the storefront above us. A guy's car lost control and smashed into it and blew up. It knocked out power and shook us up, Richard."

Riker glared at her. "That's Agent Riker to you, Ilia."

"…Sorry." she mumbled, but continued. "We're on backup power now but that's about as far as we've gotten in assessing the damage."

Riker rubbed his chin. "The response teams are already out?"

"Yes, as per protocol. But it seems kinda unnecessary."

Riker disagreed. "This would be a great time for someone to strike at us. Better to have the response teams sweep the area to make sure. Your our controller, Ilia. Get yourself back online, we'll need someone coordinating this."

* * *

><p>Fox 1 and his team, Fox 2 and Fox 3, had left the apartment and made their way to the basement level of the building. They made their way toward the far corner of the room and Fox 1 pulled out a white keycard with a magnetic strip.<p>

"Opening the door." he said quietly into his mic to the rest of his team and to Lim. "Visor cams active, sir?"

"Fox 1, 2 and 3, your cameras look good." Lim returned.

"Alright, going in." Fox 1 said. He swiped the card against a card reader disguised as a electric hand dryer. With a whoosh of air, a door appeared to the left leading to a small staircase that was lit in a red hue.

"Straight in, and to your left. That is where we picked up the most electrical activity." Lim said. "That may be where some of their computers lie. We need their information."

Fox 1 laid flat against the wall, his hand to his equipment. He looked down the hall, saw nothing and continued deeper into the dragon's den. As per Savior's own laws which extended into the Rapiers, they were not permitted to kill. But that didn't mean that they weren't allowed to defend themselves. On each of their hips, they contained a small electric stun stick that doubled as a baton and strapped to their legs were semi-automatic pistols that shot beanbag rounds at what was considered 'not lethal' capacity. In other words, they would hurt like a mother if you were shot with one.

"Wait. Fox 1, stop." Lim ordered. "Turn to your left. Look at that sign for me."

Fox 1 moved so his visor cam could look at the sign on the wall.

BIOLOGY

"No, no." Lim said.

Fox 1 kept moving and came to a fork that could go either left or right. He stopped and flattened himself against the wall and peered around the corner. Nobody was there. He turned the corner and Fox 3, who was trailing them, turned and walked backwards to cover their rear. Fox 2 kept looking ahead and to the sides. Between them and Lim watching all of their movements as well, they were unlikely to be surprised by the enemy.

"Wait. Fox 2, let me see that door on your right." Lim ordered. Fox 1 and 3 flattened themselves against either side of the door and covered him.

CONTROL/SERVER ROOM - RESTRICTED ACCESS

"This is what we want. Get in there." Lim said.

Fox 2 crouched in front of the simple numerical panel in front of the door that served as the lock.

"How long to break it open?" Fox 1 asked.

"Less than a minute." Fox 2 said, already having removed the face of the keypad and was crossing wires within.

Fox 3 then motioned to Fox 1. He pointed to his ears and pointed down the hallway which was dark at the end. But they could hear telltale footsteps against the floor, someone was coming. Fox 1 was looking down his end of the hall for some kind of cover, but it just lead to a dead end.

"Fox 2, get that door open, now!" Lim hissed over the radio. The other two couldn't say anything if they didn't want to give their presence away to the approaching footsteps.

Thankfully, without a sound, the door opened up and Fox 1 and 3 quickly went in with Fox 2 taking a moment longer to place the keypad back into place. Then he joined them and the door closed behind him.

"Think we were spotted?" Fox 2 asked.

"Perhaps." Fox 1 said. "Spread out. Find cover, draw your weapons and train them on this door. Do not fire unless you're fired upon or your spotted."

* * *

><p>It turns out that Fox 1's intuition was right. Not even a minute later the door swished open.<p>

With the main power out, the whole room was cast in the same red hue as the rest of the complex. As you walked in, there was a long table with multiple monitors and several keyboards tied into the wall. There was also a large panel lit up with multiple lights that were flashing.

This was the control room. But the actual servers lay beyond this one; the server room. The wall behind the monitors was made of clear plexiglass where one could look into the actual server room where four rows of black towers the height of a healthy adult man lay. On either side of the control room lay a door that led to the server room.

"How do they look?" one of the agents named Tyler said. The other agent, Hicks, had crouched to look at one of the monitors.

"The backup power is running. So long as we get main power back up in a few hours, we won't have to shut down." Hicks said, looking at a program that showed the reserve power dedicated to their servers. "See anything in there?"

Tyler looked over the top of the table into the server room. "Nah."

"Alright…" Hicks said and stood up. "Let's go."

They turned away from the control room, exited and continued down the hall.

* * *

><p>The control room was quiet for a full minute after they'd left, as per Lim's order over their radios. After that minute, Fox 1, who had taken a hiding spot in a supply closet swiftly went to the door and pressed his ear against it, listening. While doing that, he motioned with his other hand in a 'come on' motion. Fox 2 and 3 came into the room from either of the two doors that led into the control room from the server room.<p>

"Fox 2, get that-." Fox 1 ordered.

"Already on it." Fox 2 said, who had slipped into one of the chairs and was working his magic onto the computers. After a few moments, he stopped hitting keys and was staring at the screen.

"Uh oh." Fox 2 gulped. "These files are proprietary to the hard drives. The computer is locking me out of transferring them."

"Which means?" Fox 3 said impatiently.

"That I can't just copy them. We'd have to take the actual hard drives that contain the files. And before you ask, yes I can break this, but it'll take too long."

"Do it." Lim commanded over the com. "It wont be stealth, but it doesn't matter if they can't figure out who has robbed them."

* * *

><p>"Did you notice?" Tyler asked his partner.<p>

"If you mean that the outside keypad had been fuddled with, then yes." Hicks said.

Tyler frowned. "I didn't see that. But I did see the panel was lit for both of the doors into the server room being ajar."

Both men were silent for a moment and looked behind them at the door to the room they'd just left.

"What are you thinking?" Hicks said to Tyler.

"Those are too many coincidences." Tyler was said, placing a finger to a earpiece in his right ear. "Tyler to Ilia."

"Ilia here, go ahead." came the reply.

"Request dispatch of additional agents to server room. I think we've been infiltrated."

The line was quiet for a moment. "Ma'am?"

"Apologies, Tyler." Ilia said after a second. "Where are you now?"

"Not more than 10 yards from the server room. Hicks and I swept the room but while we were in it, we both noticed things out of the ordinary."

"Set up outside the server room. I'm sending 4 additional agents to back you up. Tyler, you have command. Investigate the server room. In the meantime, we will shut the server room down from here. It'll shut down all the external magnetic seals on the doors, but I'm betting that's where our intruder is."

"Got it."

* * *

><p>"Agent Riker, I-" Ilia started, but stopped.<p>

"I heard." he said, withdrawing his side arm and checking it over. He hadn't left the command room when he'd gotten his report from Ilia. "I'm going over there too."

* * *

><p>"3, there's six square boxes on that black tower over there. Pull them out for me." Fox 2 said into the server room.<p>

Just as he'd done so, the room was tossed into total darkness.

Fox 1 mumbled a curse under his breath.

"What the hell?" Fox 3 exclaimed.

"Silence!" Fox 1 ordered over their comms in as quiet a voice he could manage. "We've been made. Fox 3?"

"Yes, I got the boxes."

"That's everything we needed." Fox 2 said. "Now we just need to get out of here."

"Both of you get into the server room." Fox 1 ordered.

"Fox 1," Lim said. "You are not permitted to sacrifice yourself for your team. I want all three of you out of there."

"Sir, I wasn't planning on sacrificing myself. I have a plan." he said, looking for the way back into the supply closet he'd hid in earlier.

* * *

><p>Hicks and Tyler were waiting on either side of the door into the server room. Neither would speak. Both were straining their ears to try to listen into the room, but it was nearly impossible with the thickness of the walls and the sturdiness of the door itself. Hicks spotted 4 agents walking their way with sidearms drawn. Hicks motioned to Tyler and he turned to face them all.<p>

"Alright people, this is the situation. Hicks and I swept the room earlier and we noticed some strange stuff. We think we've got foxes in the henhouse. Don't know how many people may be in there or if they've gone to other locations. We'll focus on securing this room first."

"Got it." the three said in unison.

"You three will flood the room first. Hicks and I will come in behind."

The three agents got into a line in front of the door. Hicks was at the keypad and was already punching in the keycode but stopped at the last number. He looked at Tyler, who held up his hand with his fingers extended. He started ticking them off one by one.

4...

3...

2...

1...

He dropped his hand after that. Hicks opened the door and the three agents stormed into the room with Tyler and Hicks bringing up the rear. All five of them noticed as soon as they were into the room, which was still in darkness, that their feet were splashing on something on the floor.

"What the?" Hicks said.

"Heads up!" Tyler screamed. He'd spotted what he instantly recognized as stun sticks that were turned on but were heading for the floor.

"Shi-"

* * *

><p>Fox 1, 2 and 3 all stopped cold when they heard the screams from behind them.<p>

"Damn, we we're spotted!" Fox 1 growled, and started crawling again.

"Disregard." Lim said. "Your plan seemed to work well and has incapacitated them."

"Smart idea flooding that floor sink with water and using the stun sticks to shock them." Fox 2 commended.

Fox 1 nodded to himself at the head of their line. After he had set his trap, he joined Fox 2 and 3 in the server room and had found an air duct used to cool the room and had crawled into it.

"It's not over yet. Sir, has our escape route been secured?"

"Yes, but you'll need to hurry."

"I can see the basement we came into up ahead, we're on our way!"

* * *

><p>"Tyler, Hicks, respond." Riker was saying into his earpiece. He was already en route to the server room when he had heard them yelling over their own comms. As he approached, he remembered that he'd ordered power cut to the server room.<p>

"Riker to Ilia."

"Ilia here."

"Restore backup power to the server room. Get the mag locks reengaged."

"Yes, sir."

Riker was nearly at the door when he heard his feet splashing on liquid on the ground. He stopped cold. There shouldn't be a reason that their complex was flooding.

He approached the door and slipped in, finding darkness. But the ambient red light from the hall served to illuminate bodies on the floor in front of him.

"Tyler!" Riker exclaimed, dropping to his knees and trying to rouse him. He was shivering and was awakened when he heard his name.

"Sir…trap." he said.

"Backup power restored." Ilia said over the comms, illuminating the room for Riker. He could see that all of the other agents were moving and were alive. He did notice the stun sticks on the ground and figured out what happened.

"Where'd they go?" Riker asked.

"…don't know." Tyler said, looking down.

Riker stood and stepped toward the terminal. At once he saw the grate removed for the air vent in the server room and he also saw the terminal flashing a notice that six proprietary drives had been removed from the servers.

"Ilia! We've been infiltrated. Dispatch a medical team to the server room, I've got five wounded!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Have the mag locks been reengaged?"

"They've coming up right now."

_So they've been down for at least two minutes_, Riker thought to himself. "Ilia, get the rest of the agents out on the street. The intruder may have gotten out through one of the air vents leading to the server room. We need to cut them off."

"Agent Riker, those vents end up in the basement entrance to the complex."

Riker ran out of the server room, shouting as he went. "I'm going out through the basement, have the rest go out through the rear and alley entrances! Sweep the area and meet at the accident on street level!"

* * *

><p>Fox 1 jumped down from the air vent and landed softly on the ground. He could still hear the fire trucks and ambulances outside the building still working on containing that fire. That meant they still had time, but their cover wouldn't last forever. Fox 1 started dashing for the stairway back upstairs, with 2 and 3 behind him but everyone stopped cold when they heard footsteps racing toward them that weren't their own. It was coming from the hidden entrance.<p>

"2! 3! The bookshelves!"

2 and 3 immediately tipped over a steel bookshelf that was near where the doorway would open up to help block it, then made their way toward the staircase.

The hidden door slid open and Riker, through the debris, could make out what was Fox 2 and 3 running up the stairs.

"Ilia! 2 contacts heading up to ground level from the basement entrance! I'm after them!"

2 and 3 ran into the store room where the basement door led and swung it shut.

"The table! Hurry!" Fox 2 said, spotting a steel table and threw it against the door. It would buy them a few seconds. They ran into the hall that led to the rear entrance to see Fox 1 peering outside.

"What?" they said breathlessly.

"There's more agents out back this way." Fox 1 said. "Sir, it's getting hot here! About that evac?"

"It's here! Move!" Lim called to them. The three of them headed away from the rear entrance and toward the front where the car had came into the building.

* * *

><p>Riker stormed up the stairs and promptly felt it hit something as he tried to swing the door outward. He turned his body and started slamming into it with his body and his shoulder. Every second he lost was another second these intruders had to get away.<p>

"Bastards blocked the door!" Riker yelled.

"I've got nothing on the rear entrance, Riker." an agent's voice came into Riker's ear. He tapped his earpiece.

"They came up the basement entrance! They blocked me into the stairway!"

"Right, we're circling around, we'll check the front!"

After one more shove, the table gave way enough for Riker to squeeze through. He saw no one, but headed for the front. "I'll meet you there!"

* * *

><p>As soon as Riker shoved his way past the firefighters who assumed he was someone that was trapped in the building, he took a long look around the front of the store. The car was still on fire not too far from him and there were a couple of firefighters still working to contain it. He saw that down either end of the street, police had blocked traffic from coming into the area so they and the firefighters and EMT's could do their jobs. He saw six men in black suits run toward him from the alley next to the store; the two teams that were monitoring the alley and rear entrances to the DXS.<p>

"Well?" Riker demanded.

"Nothing, sir. No contacts." one said.

Riker ran over to one of the firefighters near their trucks, simultaneously ordering his other agents to fan out and check the bystanders. "Hey, you!"

"Eh?"

"Federal agent! You seen two guys dressed in black come running out of the building?"

The man thought about it. "No, can't say I did. All we've seen is the wounded and then you guys come flying out of nowhere."

Riker grunted disgustedly and tapped his earpiece. He had to yell over the noise of a ambulance leaving. "Anything in the ambulances?"

"No, sir." the agent paused. "All…legitimate injured."

Riker looked around wild eyed.

"Ilia, anything?"

"…No."

Riker kicked the side of the fire truck he'd been standing against, letting Ilia's next words sink in and literally marinate in his brain.

"They disappeared. We lost them."

* * *

><p>"Are we clear?"<p>

"Yes."

Fox 1 raised himself up from the gurney and wiped the sweat from his brow, mixing it into some of the fake blood he'd smeared over himself. He looked over at Fox 2 and 3, who were in their EMT uniforms that they'd worn below their uniforms and had discarded. They'd carried Fox 1 out of the front of the building as if they were doing their jobs. And into a waiting ambulance being driven by Lim.

Lim looked back into the rear of the truck as he sped down the street. "Well done, well done."

"Thank you, sir!" Fox team said in unison and then collapsed in a heap in the rear.


	7. Interlude

THE NEXT DAY

Xavier stood outside Millstone Tower wondering just why he'd taken this unknown invitation to come downtown to meet with someone that didn't even identify himself over the phone. All the man had said, basically, was that he wanted to meet him and that he'd explain everything then.

Sighing, he looked up at the skyscraper with some pride. It stood as one of the landmarks for his city. Sure, Millstone didn't have much to speak of, but this was one of its brightest spots. Millstone Tower was actually two towers and its twin was just a block away. The bottom of it was filled with shops, restaurants, a theatre and a subway station below it. There was a similar setup in the other tower as well, giving rise to the name 'Tower City' among the city's residents. It caught on with the various political figures in Millstone and it was made a official name well before Xavier was born.

But there was more to Millstone Towers than just Tower City. In each of the lobbies were three elevators that led to the higher levels that housed many different offices and work spaces for people that had leased space in the building. Xavier had never really found a reason to go past the security guard that watched those elevators until today.

He hit the 22nd floor and jerked in surprise at the sudden elevation. _One of those speed elevators, _he thought to himself.

Xavier stepped off and saw the entirety of the floor had been pretty much made into a large cubicle space. There was a hum in the air from a bunch of quiet conversations, active printers and paper carts being pushed around.

"Um, excuse me?" Xavier said to a receptionist who smiled at him. "Hi. I'm looking for a Mr. Scott Alan?"

"And who might you be?" she asked politely.

"My name's Michael Xavier."

"Ah!" she exclaimed, and almost knocked over the water she'd had next to her keyboard. "He's expecting you about now. Just go to your right and you'll see a office door with his name on it."

Xavier nodded to her and proceeded down the hall as instructed. He came to the door with 'Scott Alan - Director' on it. _A director? Of what?_ Xavier wondered.

He opened the door and poked his head in. "Mr. Alan?"

The man inside turned from his terminal to face the voice and Xavier recognized him immediately. "Hey! You're the guy from the alleyway!"

Indeed, the same middle aged man that he'd saw in that alleyway was before him now. He was sharply dressed in an all grey suit with a black tie and looked none the worse for wear considering the shape he was in not even a day and a half ago.

"That's me. You can call me Scott. Come on in." Scott said.

Xavier came in tepidly and sat himself at one of the two chairs that faced Scott's oak desk. Immaculately clean, Xavier did notice a picture in the corner of a pretty lady with two young girls. _Likely his family_, he thought.

"So…you wanted to see me?" Xavier said.

"I wanted to thank you personally." Scott said, offering his hand. Xavier took it and they shook. "You kept me from getting fired basically."

"Huh?"

Scott rose from his desk and closed his office door. "You see, Michael-"

"Xavier."

"Huh?'

"If you don't mind, I prefer Xavier."

Scott shrugged his shoulders, "Sure. Xavier, I'm a bit of a workaholic. That guy that had caught me the other day almost made off with a piece of property that I had just finished up for my client."

Xavier scrunched up his eyebrows, "Wait, I never saw the guy try to leave with your briefcase."

"Oh, no. The briefcase wasn't important. It was the card he was trying to take."

Xavier shook his head. "Wait, that card was your property that if you'd lost, you'd have been fired?"

Scott smiled in a 'I-know-something-you-don't' kind of way. "Xavier, do you know what kind of office this is?"

He shook his head.

"All the people on this floor are working for me and I'm working for Upperdeck making, designing and printing Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards."

Xavier shot up from the chair and opened up the door to Scott's office. His eyes landing on the first computer he saw, he indeed saw a blown up image of a Yu-Gi-Oh! Card that a artist was designing the interior for. He looked over and saw that the printer he heard was a type that was fed long, heavy pieces of cardboard in one end and Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards came out the other end.

"No. Shocking. Way." Xavier said.

Scott chucked, "Well I've never heard it put that way before."

Xavier looked back at Scott with a newfound kind of respect. "Wow…"

"Boggles the mind, huh?"

Xavier sat down and tried to clear his head. "So you guys print off the cards here?"

Scott shrugged. "More or less. Feel like having a lesson on how the cards you got in your deck got to the store you bought them at?"

Xavier nodded happily and Scott smiled broadly. "Well, it's in three phases that a card is created. Development, Creation and Production. The development is done by Upperdeck. They're the ones that make the card rules, the card effects, attack levels, defense levels, yada, yada, yada. So once they're done with that, they need to send them off to someone that can make their designs into something they can hold. And that's where my company comes in. We take the design notes from Upperdeck and we create the prototypes that they want for their products. We're the creation side of the process."

"You're not the production?"

Scott shook his head. "Once the cards are approved and ok'ed, we ship off the card designs both to Upperdeck and a company that can handle huge orders like the ones they ask for Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards. We're talking about making, cutting and packaging around 60,000 - 80,000 cards a day."

"80,000 cards?"

"Boggles the mind, huh?"

Xavier looked at the office again. "You know what, Scott? I'm jealous. You've got a dream job."

Scott smiled sadly and looked at the picture on his desk, and Xavier noticed it. "Well, its not all gravy. It's caused me a few bumps in my personal life."

"That's your family?" Xavier asked.

Scott picked up the picture frame gently. "Yeah, my wife and daughters."

Xavier didn't think a comment like 'they're lovely looking' would be appreciated from him, especially about his daughters, so he kept quiet.

"I love my job, but they're my world." he said, more to himself than anything.

Both of them hit kind of a lull in their conversation. "Um, can I ask you something, Scott?"

He nodded.

"Did you see that man?"

Scott knew who Xavier was talking about. "That guy that roughed up the man with the dreadlocks, right?"

"Yeah, you saw him? I thought you'd gotten knocked out."

"No, I was just…" Scott put down the picture and looked at his hand. "I was just frozen, I think. It all happened so fast after that duel. The guy with the dreads took my project away, then he showed up and manhandled him. And then you came and gave me the cards back."

Xavier rubbed his neck. "Well, honestly, I thought you were knocked out, too. But it was just the right thing to do."

"But, yeah, I did see him." Scott said, looking up as if he were remembering. "I remember someone telling me about a urban legend that almost fits that guy to a T."

"Quentin Squires?" Knowledge tried.

Scott snapped his fingers. "That's it! I saw the rook on his face. I knew it was something like that."

"I thought so, too." Xavier said. He thought about it then asked if Scott had seen him after he'd left that alley but he shook his head.

"After I came about and got myself together again, all I did was get out of there as fast as I could."

"Begs the question, what were you doing there?" Xavier asked.

Now it was Scotts turn to look meek. "…taking a shortcut?"

It was quiet for all of two seconds before both of them couldn't help but snicker about that. Scott, Xavier noted, acted more like a big kid than a middle-aged man and he liked that about him.

Scott riffled around in his desk, speaking as he went. "But I'm getting off track here. I called you here because I wanted to properly thank you for helping me out. Ah, here it is."

He sat a plain envelope on the table and scooted it over to Xavier. Xavier looked at Scott and he nodded as if it were ok for him to take it, so he did. When he opened it, he got his second surprise of the afternoon.

"This is a Synchro Monster!"

Scott crossed his arms. "Another thing that we do here is do work on the holographic models used by Canyon Ltd., the company that makes the Duel Disks. Once we have the go ahead by Upperdeck, we can start work straight away on making the holographic models for one of our other clients, Canyon Ltd. But you're familiar with the Synchro's?"

"Of course!" Xavier exclaimed, pulling out the card. It was the Seven Swords Warrior he'd seen Scott using yesterday, but also there was another monster in the envelope, a Tuner Monster called Tune Warrior. An Earth attribute, Warrior type monster that was actually a normal type slash tuner.

Scott took a quick glance at his watch and seemed to deflate a little. "To sum it up, this is my gift to you, Xavier. My thanks for being the righteous one back there."

"Thanks!" Xavier exclaimed, jumping up and shaking Scott's hand again.

* * *

><p>It was close to noon in Millstone Park, the apex of it's activity. This was the time that most people found time to take a walk through for relaxations sake, exercise or what have you. Terry had started using it as a way to continue his meditation. It was becoming obvious that he couldn't do it around his friends without them poking him with sticks or something. He wasn't a tree hugger or anything, but having spent the last couple days in the same spot near a semi-private manmade waterfall made him appreciate the natural beauty of the area.<p>

He was sitting near the waterfall and every now and then could feel the mist of the water against his skin. He focused on his breathing, closed his eyes and let his other senses lapse. He listened mostly to his breathing but was aware of the sweet sounds of the birds around him. It was a pleasant day and the noonday sun felt good on his skin. It all helped to lull him into a relaxed state, sort of a self-hypnosis.

Terry's goal in doing this was that he was trying to find Sharp.

When Sharp was created, the man that had called himself Shadi explained that Sharp was no creation of the Millennium Puzzle, but a creation of Terry's mind. A split personality, to put into layman's terms. This wasn't something like from the TV show where Sharp was some nameless soul from 5000 years ago trapped in a trinket. Sharp was a part of Terry that Terry had helped to create. And, he now freely admitted, Sharp was his way of dealing with the situations that he was supposed to, but couldn't.

It had started with Re'-Sha, the soul that had been sealed into the Millennium Ring that Kwandao now claimed. She had been intent on gathering all the Millennium Items and through her ability to see the future, she saw that he was the one person that could or would stop her. She was merciless and was predominantly in control of Kwandao's body whenever they'd met. In the first encounter he'd had with her, Terry had barely managed to save the hostages that she'd taken. In his heart of hearts, he didn't feel like he beat her. He felt like he got lucky. Lucky doesn't cut it when someone's life is in your hands.

Then came the time in the Battle City finals where he was supposed to duel against her. He'd been given the opportunity to create Sharp by Shadi the night before. But, ultimately, it was his choice on if he wished Sharp to face her, or him. And he took the coward's way out.

Now there was the incident with Savior and him framing him and his friends for stealing those Dragon Bones that he now possessed. Even though Sharp had taken control of his body long before that incident started, there was the time where the two of them had met. It served to clear the air between them just a little and with Terry asking Sharp that if Sharp didn't see a way to get the job done without just defeating Savior, then do things _his_ way and likely end him. But Sharp couldn't do it. He wasn't strong enough.

He was fighting against an opponent that had beaten his other half. _More like my better half, _he thought to himself. For him to even have a chance to beat Savior, he knew he was going to need every ally he could get. That included Sharp. So he started thinking of ways to try to find out what happened. His initial thought was to try to reach out to Shadi, but he didn't. Then he turned to himself and this method of self-hypnosis. It was through these 'sessions' with himself that he began to have the thoughts that he did now; he was lucky against Re'-Sha the first time, he was a true coward, he couldn't fight his own battles. But it wasn't what he was looking for.

Terry imagined himself within a city in his mind. A city at night lit by a pale moon where he had the keys to all of the houses, but he was the only resident. The only thing that stayed in the houses were his memories and as he went, he unlocked memories he couldn't recall or experienced memories that were still fresh. Within his mind, he could do anything, and found himself gliding through the air rather than walking. And with each door that he opened, he was greeted with a memory but not with what he was searching for.

He realized that that was exactly what he would find in these houses. Memories. And nothing more. Sharp was not a memory. He'd known that for a little while now. Terry crossed his arms within his mind and allowed himself to hover just above the houses that went on for eternity. But there was nothing else in this scape. Houses upon houses, each one looking a little different which sometimes said a lot about the memory contained within. Some that were more funhouse looking contained the more playful memories and some that looked old, haunted and decrepit contained fitting memories.

He looked up at a night sky that had no stars and just a pale moon.

"Terry! Terry!"

Terry was brought violently back to reality by Jamie insistently shaking his arm, but he almost wanted to clock his friend right then and there.

"The moon!" Terry exclaimed to himself. "That's gotta be it!"

"Wha…huh?" Jamie said.

Terry looked over at him, but shook his head. "No. Nothing. But why are you here?"

Jamie pulled on his arm like a kid trying to drag a parent to their favorite toy in the store. "Come on! We gotta go see Pedigree. He's found something and everyone's on their way to meet at his place."

"Even Knowledge?" Terry asked.

Jamie's enthusiasm dropped considerably. "Well, I tried to get ahold of him, but…"

Terry looked off in another direction. Knowledge, yesterday, said he needed some time to clear his head and asked to be left alone after they'd all met with Pedigree initially.

"I'm sure he'll find what he needs to." Terry said, allowing himself to get dragged by Jamie.

* * *

><p>Terry, Jamie, Vega, Kwandao, Janet and a very reluctant Natasha were gathered in Pedigree's apartment again. They'd been called by Pedigree because he said he'd 'found the needle in the haystack' he was looking for. It was apparent from his look that he hadn't slept in a while. It was also apparent from his smell he hadn't showered in a while, either. Old man smell; a step more 'mature' than middle-aged man smell. That didn't stop him from tediously dunking a Oreo cookie into milk before he turned to his entourage.<p>

"Let me just say that-"

"Get on with it, Pedigree." Natasha cut in.

Instantly, Jamie and Terry let their eyes search his apartment for the Equalizer but it wasn't to be seen.

"Temper, temper, ya old bat." Pedigree instead sassed.

Natasha's eyes flew open so far, they could've fallen out. "Talk about the pot calling the kettle black…"

"Anyway, I came across a little…" Pedigree decided the Oreo was soft enough and gobbled it up. "…something for you kids. Seems like your boys relocated."

"Relocated?" Terry asked.

"I's found something when I kept poking my nose into this shipping company." Pedigree said, getting up and stretching his joints. He headed toward his bathroom and shut the door. Everyone thought he was just going to relieve himself then continue his story.

A few seconds later, everyone heard the water running for the shower.

Janet stomped forward and kicked the door. The bathroom door was partially hidden from view where everyone else was.

"Waagh!" came a muffled grunt.

"You aren't finished out here!" Janet yelled. "I'm not waiting for you to get zestfully clean before you finish explaining yourself!"

Quickly, the door jerked open and Janet almost jumped back in surprise. Terry, Jamie, Vega, Natasha and Kwandao all watched as a t-shirt, grey sweatpants and a pair of boxers were flung out at her. "Take care of that, will ya?" Pedigree then shut the door again.

Despite himself, Terry hid behind Jamie's body dying to keep from laughing out loud. The others, even Vega, were trying hard not to take light of the situation, especially when Janet was in such a state of shock that she didn't move as a pair of boxers hung off the side of her head and a t-shirt was slung across her shoulder.

The only thing Janet could think of was 'scarred for life.'

"It's all there on mah computer, you kids can't read?" Pedigree called out.

Terry sniffled and looked over at the terminals. He saw a window open that said, 'click me.' and he did. It opened up a presentation that Pedigree had prepared.

"Ok, kiddies." a voice like his said through the speakers. "Your friends in the Shang Dynasty are pretty crafty. I gotta hand it to you, you know how to pick a fight."

A globe opened up. "So the last time we was talkin, I's was looking for any kind of connections your Shang Dynasty had to China. I did a little more diggin than that. I was able to find out that the place you kids was in was Lopnor, China. And that's very, very likely where your cards were heading since I's hearing about some explosion out that way that they're investigating."

The globe had a big arrow on it that went from China and landed in the United States. "But I got something else. There was some orders that was made that fit the earlier profile that we found. But now, those orders have been forwarded, and they've all been forwarded to one state, one county and one single location. Looks like the Shang got a touch sloppy when they were moving."

The arrow stopped over the US, then it started zooming in on New York state, then New York City.

"The orders are still backed up in customs awaiting processing. They're due to be delivered to the forwarded address in four days."

"Four days…" Terry exclaimed, slapping his hands together. "I got you, Savior…"

The recording went on. "I's left you a map and a CD with everything you should need. But now it's time for me to go."

Everyone looked in surprise as the three monitors went dark and then one came back on. But around their feet, they could hear a whirring coming from the computer's terminal that didn't seem normal. "Them boys and girls in the Shang Dynasty are not stupid. They know that someone was poking around the internet looking to track them down. Heh, in my old age, I got sloppy. I know they know where I am, so I'm planning a field trip. One you don't need to know about."

Terry jumped up and dashed for the bathroom. He gave it a running start tackle twice before it came unglued from its hinges and collapsed inward. Inside the bathroom, all he saw was a running shower head and a opening in the bathroom's ceiling that led outside to the roof. The recording played in his ears as a breeze toyed with his hair. "Terry, you seem like a good kid. These people in the Shang Dynasty mean business. They will mess up your life but good if you cross them in the wrong way. So I hope for your sake, you know what you're getting yourself into. But hey, it was fun while it lasted! Got to meet some of your buddies and you seem to have a pretty nice group around you. Here's hoping you kick some underground ass out there."

"Oh yeah, and Natasha? You stay away from them internet dating sites. I mean, I know a man as thought-provoking as myself is a keeper, but you're too old for me!"

Pedigree's voice cackled through the speakers until they died out leaving a absolutely fuming Natasha with her friends, despite the situation, smirking at her.

"You use a dating website?" Vega asked.

Natasha screamed to the heavens. "Pedigree! I'll kill you!"


End file.
